BAGHDAD – Nechirvan Barzani, the Kurdistan Regional Government prime minister, is to visit Baghdad soon to resolve outstanding disputes with the central government after the two sides reached a breakthrough interim deal on oil, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the Iraqi oil minister, said on Saturday.

Abdul-Mahdi was speaking at a new conference two days after a visit to Erbil in which a first step was taken in resolving an almost one-year dispute over independent Kurdish oil sales and Baghdad’s failure to pay its share of the KRG budget.

The isolation between Erbil and Baghdad during months of poor relations had made it difficult for Baghdad to assess the status of oil production in the KRG, the minister said. “We will be happy to welcome the prime minister,” he said.

He said there were also plans to revise Iraq’s current legislation on oil and gas. One task ahead was to consider how to deal with the situation of oil-producing and non-oil-producing regions throughout Iraq.

Thursday’s deal involves an upfront payment of $500 million by Baghdad to pay the salaries of Kurdish civil servants. In return, Kurdistan would hand over to the federal government 150,000 barrels of Kurdish oil a day exported through Kurdistan’s pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

The arrangement would covers the month of October. For November, there would another payment of $1 billion and the KRG would hand over 150,000 barrels of oil a day to the federal government.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s Kurdish finance minister, said: “It’s a reasonable deal and removes a major obstacle. Both sides needed this deal but this is only the beginning.”

Rudaw