Cabinet approves revived plan for re-starting northern exports

The Iraqi Cabinet approved a plan Thursday for re-starting oil exports through Turkey and resuming federal budget transfers to the Kurdistan region, although there appear to be several potential challenges to implementing the deal.

The agreement hinges on the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) ability to deliver 230,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude production to the federal oil marketing company, SOMO, according to a Cabinet statement. That expectation currently seems impossible to meet, given the Iraqi government's failure to prevent or address a recent campaign of drone attacks on Kurdistan's oil fields that has taken at least half of the region's production offline.