Smuggling operations of Kirkuk province's oil to Iran have increased recently with the purpose of re-refining and sending it as oil derivatives, reports showed.
An official source familiar with the matter told Asharq Al-Awsat that smuggling operations have already existed before the enforcement of the law on Kirkuk on October 16, 2017, yet they have shrunk to one percent since then.
According to the reports, there is coordination and covert cooperation between the government and the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government to smuggle oil.
The road linking Kirkuk and the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Sulaymaniyah is usually packed at night with oil tanker trucks of 36,000 liters loaded with oil from the fields of Kirkuk as the trucks take the Shwan road and then head to Sulaymaniyah before arriving in Iran, reports added.
The official underscored that the checkpoints of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces are only a few meters away from the checkpoints of the joint forces in Kirkuk, set on the roads on which the trucks pass through, but neither of the forces can prevent these tankers from passing.
In this context, Deputy Head of the Turkmen Front Hassan Turan told Asharq Al-Awsat that quantities of Kirkuk oil are being exported to Iran under an agreement between the Iraqi Federal Oil Ministry and the Iranian Oil Ministry.
Turan explained that this agreement was concluded in Vienna between the oil ministers of the two countries and allows Iraq to export quantities of oil to Iran to be refined there and re-exported to the Kurdistan region.
“This agreement is formal and we know about it, and therefore the export operations must be carried out in light of this agreement or else it would be considered smuggling for the benefits of non-official parties,” Turan added.
He said that “news about smuggling of oil, especially in Kirkuk, is circulated every now and then, but in fact we do not have evidence in this regard."
