ERBIL (Dispatches) – A recent report has revealed that officials in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region exported 1.7 million barrels of crude oil to the Israeli-occupied territories throughout the month of June, despite the fact that the Arab country’s lawmakers approved a draft bill earlier this year banning the normalization of diplomatic relations with the Zionist regime.
According to the Iraqi Arabic-language al-Maalomah news agency, the energy-rich region exported 446,000 barrels of oil on a daily basis last month.
Britain and Croatia were other purchasers of the Kurdish oil.
Moreover, Turkey and the Zionist regime each imported over 1.7 barrels of crude from the Kurdistan region during the month of June.
The report went on to note that the export of more than 11 million barrels of crude oil in June brought in revenues worth over 1.5 billion U.S. dollars for the Kurdistan region.
Back on June 17, an Iraqi politician called on the Baghdad government to open an in-depth investigation into reports that shipments of crude oil had been smuggled out of Kurdistan to the occupied territories.
“The smuggling of oil from Kurdistan to Tel Aviv, which is being carried out under the supervision of ruling parties in Erbil [the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region), is no longer a secret,” independent Kurdish politician Othman Hassan Pasha said at the time.
“The smuggling of oil, which floods the treasury of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) with millions of dollars every day, has adversely affected the lives of millions of Kurds in light of a stifling fuel crisis,” Pasha pointed out.
According to a Financial Times report, more than two-thirds of Israel’s oil are imported from the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government has repeatedly denied that it deals directly or indirectly with the occupying regime, with KRG officials pointing out that oil cargoes often change hand several times before reaching its final destination.