Oil flows via Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline hit new high of 650,000 bpd
Loading data showed flows through the pipeline were running at around 450,000 bpd earlier this year but have risen sharply in the past few days.
"Kurds are supplying 650,000 bpd this month and all is going to SOMO," an industry source with knowledge of the matter said, referring to the Iraq's state oil marketer SOMO.
Under a deal struck last December between Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad, Kurds committed to export an average of 550,000 bpd from Ceyhan via SOMO in 2015, in return for the reinstatement of budget payments.
"Earlier this year, there were minor shortfalls. Now Kurds are pumping more than their commitment this month to raise the overall average," the source said, adding that the plan was to pump around these levels throughout April.
"And certainly Kurds will be expecting payments from Baghdad."
The central government cut budget payments to the Kurds in January 2014 as punishment for their attempts to export oil independently, plunging the autonomous region into economic crisis and forcing it to seek loans at home and abroad.
Oil exports from Iraq's Kirkuk field via Ceyhan had stopped for months last year, when the Baghdad-controlled federal pipeline came under attack by Islamic State militants.
(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov, additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in ISTANBUL; Editing by Alison Williams)
