Story of the wondering Kurdish tanker finally reaches a conclusion
The oil tanker filled with 1 million barrels of Kurdish crude is finally leaving the coast of Texas and is heading back across the Atlantic with all its cargo still aboard.
A report from Bloomberg Businessesweek states that The United Kalavryta is heading to Gibraltar, the British territory on the southern tip of Spain. The ships operator, Kyriakos Maragoudakis, reiterated by email Tuesday that the tanker did not unload any product during its time on the coastal shores of the United States.
The tanker found itself in a diplomatic bind lasting six months. In July, the ship turned up on radars close to a Galveston, Texas, port. The potential sale of the Kurdish petroleum left Iraqi officials disgruntled, labeling the cargo “stolen property” and claiming any help to unload the oil would be “in wrongful possession of our client’s crude oil.”
In December, Iraq and the Kurds agreed to start selling crude oil cooperatively. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Nuri Shaways claimed the new agreement would allow the two bodies to produce about 550,000 barrels a day more in northern Iraq.
