FRANK26: "NOISE.", 9 DEC

 KTFA

FRANK26: "NOISE."..........F26

Article 12 of the budget ignites a dispute in the Iraqi parliament.. What does it include?

 

12/5/2025

 

Once again, the Iraqi parliament is in a dispute over the general budget articles. Until now, neither the Finance Committee nor the political blocs have agreed on Article 12, which includes compensating the Kurdistan Regional Government for the costs of production and transportation for extracting oil in the region.

Regarding the details of the article to be amended, the representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party bloc, Jiay Timur, says, “A specialized international company will visit the oil fields in the Kurdistan Region to find out the cost of extracting oil from those fields, according to the amendment to the budget law and the political agreement.”

Timur explained in an interview with Shafaq News Agency, "The Iraqi government previously calculated in the budget law the cost of extraction at $6, and this is a very small number, and foreign companies working on extracting oil say that the cost reaches $26 per barrel."

He added that "most of the oil fields in the region are in the mountains and rocks, and drilling oil wells reaches thousands of meters, which is very expensive."

The representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party bloc continued, "The Iraqi government included in the amendment to the budget law $16 for the cost of extracting a barrel of oil in the Kurdistan Region."

For his part, member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Moeen Al-Kadhimi, told Shafaq News Agency, "The Parliamentary Finance Committee held a meeting this afternoon to discuss amending the General Budget Law, and that the amendment includes Article 12 of the law only."

He pointed out that "the Finance Committee held a meeting with officials in the Ministry of Oil, considering that it is a technical body concerned with that, and also requested a meeting with the Minister of Finance, but unfortunately the Minister did not attend."

Al-Kadhimi also indicated that "the Parliamentary Finance Committee submitted a request to the Presidency of the Council of Representatives to withdraw the amendment to the budget law from the agenda of today's session, considering that the committee has not completed the observations and discussion on the budget law."

LINK