Kurdistan Regional Government: Petro-politics in the Post-2003 Era

Abstract

Competition over natural resources between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which controls the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, has been a central component in the complicated  relations between Arabs and Kurds in post-2003 Iraq. Particularly significant in this context has been the KRG's oil politics with regard to control over, and exploitation of, oil reserves in the Kurdistan Region. Such oil politics has been manifested in independent hydrocarbon legislation and the signing of independent extraction and production contracts with transnational energy corporations. This paper seeks to explain the main motivations of KRG's behavior in petro-politics in post-2003 era. It argues that the main motivations of KRG's behavior in petro-politics lies in the KRG's aspiration to legitimize its precarious existence but geopolitical obstacles and fall of oil revenues has hit aspirations to use oil for going through independence.