Why a Tanker of Kurdish Oil is Stranded by the Galveston Coast [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

Tensions between the government of Iraq and Kurds in the northern part of the country have once again reached a boiling point. Now, Baghdad is cutting off payments to Kurdistan, because of a controversy involving a tanker off the coast of Texas.

The semiautonomous region of Kurdistan has successfully exported several shipments of oil this year. Baghdad opposed those exports, claiming that the oil belongs to the Iraqi people, and the use of its natural resources should be decided by the central government. Most recently, Baghdad successfully filed for a court order to keep one million barrels of crude oil from being unloaded in Galveston.

The Texas Standard's David Brown recently spoke with Terry Wade, Houston Bureau Chief for Reuters about how the tanker came to be there in the first place.

&quot Kurdistan) wants to be able to independently export crude, because they need the money to finance their own ambitions to create an independent state," Wade explains. "The U.S.'s position is that the oil belongs to all Iraqis, and Kurdish independence might be bad for Iraq as a whole."

More at http://kut.org/post/why-tanker-kurdish-oil-stranded-galveston-coast .