Turkey ministers discuss oil exports with Iraqi Kurdistan PM: statement

Turkey's foreign and energy ministers met the head of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan regional government for talks on Thursday, including on oil exports, which Turkey has blocked from the region since March this year.

Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani met with Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and its Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar in Erbil, the government of the region said in a statement.

"We discussed a range of regional issues, including bilateral Iraq-Turkey relations and also with the Kurdistan Region, as well as the mechanism of exporting the Kurdistan region’s oil," Barzani said in a joint press conference with Fidan following the meeting.

Neither official gave any further information on Iraq's northern oil exports and did not say if a deal had been reached to resume crude flows through Turkey.

Turkey stopped the oil flows on 25 March after losing a long-standing arbitration case brought by Iraq. Baghdad deems exports from the region via Turkey's Ceyhan port as illegal.

Iraq's oil minister has been in Ankara this week where he and his Turkish counterpart failed to reach an agreement to restart the oil exports, although both sides agreed on further talks.

(Reuters)