Iraqi Kurds link Kirkuk to own oil pipeline, plan more exports via Turkey

Iraqi Kurdistan has built a link connecting Kirkuk to its newly-built pipeline to Turkey, its minister of natural resources said, potentially cementing Kurdish control over the northern oil hub and reducing its reliance on Baghdad.

The link could allow the Kurds to start exports of Kirkuk crude oil through their own network, giving them a major source of independent revenue and boosting any ambitions of sovereign statehood as Iraq falls into increasing disarray.

The new link connects Kirkuk's Avana dome to the Khurmala dome out of which the Kurdish pipeline runs.

"That blue line was finished," Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) minister for natural resources, told a conference in London, pointing to a map of the pipelines.

Baghdad's military retreat from the north under a lightning assault led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last week allowed the KRG's Peshmerga forces to seize control of long-disputed Kirkuk and its oil reserves - the potential economic lynchpin of a sovereign Kurdish entity.

But the main 600,000 bpd Kirkuk pipeline, which accounted for the bulk of Iraq's northern crude oil exports, has been offline since March following insurgent attacks.

Attempts to repair it have been thwarted by Islamic militants in the region, who have targeted engineers trying to fix sections of the line that pass through territory outside KRG control.

Push ahead with exports

Adnan al-Janabi, a senior Sunni politician and head of Iraq's oil and gas committee, said that Kirkuk's production would likely be out for the time being along with some fields in the Salahuddin area but that oil production inside KRG areas would continue uninterrupted.

Janabi, a...