Al-Shabaki: The region’s oil is delaying the budget schedules from reaching parliament.
Al-Shabaki: The region’s oil is delaying the budget schedules from reaching parliament.
5-21-2025
Al-Maalouma / Special..
Former member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Mohammed Al-Shabaki, accused the Kurdistan Regional Government, on Wednesday, of being directly responsible for the delay in sending the budget tables to the Council of Representatives, attributing this to the region’s continued oil smuggling and its refusal to abide by agreements related to exporting oil through the national company “SOMO”.
Al-Shabaki said in a statement to / Al-Maalouma / agency, “The region’s oil is the main obstacle to the budget tables reaching the parliament, despite the recent amendments to Article (12) related to the costs of producing and exporting oil from the region.”
He explained that “the amendments came as a result of pressure from Washington, but the regional government did not comply,” adding that “the Kurdistan Democratic Party is still smuggling oil through Turkish territory, taking advantage of the presence of smugglers in Turkish ports, and not in official coordination with the Turkish government, which in turn takes commissions for transport and storage at the port of Ceyhan, away from the oversight of the national SOMO tanks.”
Al-Shabaki indicated that the region has returned to “square one,” accusing it of “using political pressure on the federal government to overlook some conditions that limit oil smuggling, with the aim of passing its export as an official process.”
It is noteworthy that many representatives and political forces criticized the Council of Ministers’ delay in finalizing the 2025 budget schedules and submitting it to the Finance Committee in the House of Representatives for scrutiny before voting on it.
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