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Iraqi Kurdistan oil pipeline export capacity to double

The capacity of Iraqi Kurdistan’s independent oil pipeline will almost double to at least 200,000 barrels per day by the end of this month, helping the semi-autonomous region increase exports and revenue, industry sources and officials said. Oil revenues are a lifeline for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, whose peshmerga forces are being supported by U.S. air strikes in their battle against the radical Sunni militants of Islamic State. A joint venture of Anglo-Turkish company Genel Energy and Sinopec’s Addax Petroleum is working to ramp up production in the Taq Taq oilfield, Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest, to 140,000 bpd by the end of this month. After months of fruitless talks with Iraq’s central government, the KRG in May started to export crude on its own independent pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean export terminal of Ceyhan. The KRG pipeline is located at a distance from the areas controlled by Islamic militants. The move has infuriated Baghdad, which claims the sole authority to manage Iraqi oil. It has cut allocations to the KRG in the budget and has tried to block KRG’s oil sales by taking legal action. So far, 7.8 million barrels of Kurdish oil have flowed through the independent pipeline, of which 6.5 million have been loaded onto tankers for export.