Turkish Energy Minister rejects claims of unilateral sanctions imposed on Turkey

Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez on Wednesday rejected claims that the Paris-based ICC ‘International Chamber of Commerce) imposed unilateral sanctions on Turkey regarding the case between Turkey and Iraq on oil exported from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to Turkey..

"There is a comprehensive report that comes with some sanctions. There are no unilateral sanctions," he said.

When asked reports that a penalty of 1.4 billion dollars was imposed on Turkey, Donmez replied:

"There is no such figure. There is a comprehensive report and there are some sanctions related to it. There are no unilateral sanctions. Four of the five issues claimed by Iraq were rejected, ona was accepted. We had our claims and demands. Out of six issues, five of our requests were accepted, one were rejected. Based on this, the sanctions are now being evaluated by our lawyers. We have an agreement with the Iraqi government that is already in effect. A little more time will tell."

Meanwhile, at least three oil licenses in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq are shut in or running at reduced rates on Wednesday following a halt to the northern export pipeline, company statements showed, with more outages on the horizon.

Iraq was forced to halt around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude exports, or half a percent of global oil supply, from the Kurdistan region (KRI) on Saturday through a pipeline that runs from its northern Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The stoppage has helped boost oil prices in recent days back to near $80/bbl.

Turkey stopped pumping Iraqi crude from the pipeline after Iraq won an arbitration case in which it said Turkey had violated a joint agreement by allowing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to export oil to Ceyhan without Baghdad's consent.