RE: What’s happening in the background?13 Jun 2023 21:51
Budget bill — or the intra-SAC negotiations with the two main Kurdish parties leading up to it — facilitates or hinders the Iraqi prime minister’s promise to pass a federal oil and gas law during his term. The same feat had also eluded his predecessors. In the past, bargaining dynamics between Baghdad and Erbil over the control of KRG hydrocarbon resources, which favored Erbil, stood as an obstacle to such a law’s passage. It was not in Erbil’s interest at the time to hand over to Baghdad control of production, export, and financial management of its hydrocarbon resources. Yet since the March ICC ruling, which itself was preceded by Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruling in 2022 on the unconstitutionality of the KRG’s oil and gas law, the power dynamics have shifted in favor of Baghdad. The more recent negotiations leading to the passage of the budget bill reflected this change. Going forward, the challenges facing Prime Minister Sudani in getting a federal oil and gas law passed will lie not only with the KRG but with other regional oil-producing governorates that are seeking to strike their own hydrocarbon revenue-sharing deals with Baghdad.