Iraqi oil minister rejects Kurdish oil plan

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Iraq’s oil minister has stepped up a dispute with the country’s northern Kurdish region over control of the country’s oil resources, saying Baghdad would not pay foreign companies for their oil exports from autonomous Kurdistan.

Hussein Shahrestani said the Iraqi government was under no obligation to ensure that the companies were paid for oil sent through pipelines from Kurdistan into Iraq and then exported by the Iraqi government to international markets.

“If [the Kurdish oil minister] can get a dollar out of the [Iraqi finance] ministry, let him call me,” he told the Financial Times.