Break in Erbil agreement casts shadow over Kurdish future

The scramble for control of oil in Iraq continues to plague the country's prospects of political and economic stability. An agreement made in December between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government has not been fulfilled by either side - a result which will cripple both sides. The  deal made in December stipulates that the country's plentiful oil supply would be sold by the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) and the KRB are to receive a 17 percent cut of these state-run oil sales.

A report from Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East reveals the KRG are not receiving their promised revenue from the central government while Baghdad are pointing their finger at the KRG for failing to deliver the agreed amounts of oil to SOMO. Instead, Iraqi Kurds have taken the region's 600,000 barrels into their own hands and begun bypassing the state-run marketer with destructive repercussions. As prophesied by Michael Knights, an Iraqi expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,  it very well may be true that "the independent export path represents a slow painful path to economic self-sufficiency that could entail a year or more of deep recession, and would then only swap dependence on Baghdad for dependence on Ankara." With oil at the core of the issue once again,  the future is potentially very bleak for the KRG.