Baghdad’s Bold Move To Take Over Kurdistan’s Oil Sector Is A Blow To Russia

Following two recent landmark legal rulings by the Supreme Court of the Federal Government of Iraq (FGI) in Baghdad, news emerged last week that Iraq’s Oil Ministry is proposing the creation of a Kurdistan National Oil Company under the federal ownership of the government in the south of Iraq. This is aimed at stripping any authority that the government of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan (the KRG) in Iraq’s north has over its heavily Russian-dominated oil industry and would render all previous contracts entered into between…