Iraq's state-owned North Oil Company (NOC) has resumed pumping oil from its fields through a Kurdish oil pipeline to Turkey, at an average pace of 70,000 bbl/d. Exports should soon rise to 100,000-150,000 bbl/d. Pumping was interrupted in March 2016 due to a dispute between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central government of Baghdad over the control of Kurdish oil exports. This would pave the way to a new agreement between the regional government and the centre and improve KRG's budget.
The province of Kurdistan is engaged in a political fight against the central government of Iraq, which claims sole authority over Iraqi crude. Kurdish forces took control of Kirkuk and its neighbouring oil fields in northern Iraq in June 2014, after Iraqi forces withdrew in the face of Islamic State's advance. Under a previous agreement, the KRG has to transfer 550,000 bbl/d of its regional oil production to Iraq's central State Organization for the Marketing of Oil (SOMO) in return for a 17% share in the federal budget; Kurdistan started to export its regional production to Turkey in December 2013 and stopped oil transfers to the central government in 2015 (and stopped receiving federal funds).