BAGHDAD — Iraqi Kurds seized control of two oil fields on Friday, vowing to use the oil to meet Kurdish consumption needs and raising tensions between the country’s political and ethnic factions as they struggle to form a new government.
The Kurdistan Regional Government, which governs a largely autonomous region in northern Iraq, said Kurdish forces moved into two northern oil fields Friday morning to preempt what it alleged were orders by the government in Baghdad to “sabotage” a new pipeline that would be used to export oil via Kurdish territory.
Iraq’s Oil Ministry accused the Kurds of seizing the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk area oil fields illegally, in violation of Iraq’s constitution.
“They are ignoring the government of Baghdad, and they are threatening the unity of Iraq,” said Assem Jihad, a ministry spokesman.
Kurdish authorities constructed the pipeline in recent years, without Baghdad’s assent, but had not yet put it to use.
Since Sunni militants swept into northern Iraq last month, rendering a critical stretch of oil infrastructure inoperable, the new pipeline has become imperative, the Kurdistan Regional Government said in a statement.
“From now on, production at the new fields under KRG control will be used primarily to fill the shortage of refined products in the domestic market. This will ease the burden on ordinary citizens caused by the failure of the federal authorities to protect the country’s vital oil infrastructure in the region,” the KRG said.
The Iraqi government is concerned that the Kurds, who have vowed to push forward with a referendum on their region’s independence, will seek to sell Kirkuk’s oil unilaterally.
Kurdish forces consolidated their control of the contested city last month after Iraqi forces fled the area in the face of advancing Sunni militants from the Islamic State group.
The jihadists now control an enormous swath of territory that lies between the Kurdish autonomous region in the north and southern provinces still under the control of the Iraqi government.
The conflicting allegations between the central government and the Kurds on Friday highlight Baghdad’s growing isolation as the country edges closer to fracturing into what some analysts describe as a Kurdish region, a Sunni region and a Shiite region.
On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, accused the mainly Sunni Kurds of collaborating with the Islamic State group by harboring terrorists in the Kurdish capital, Irbil. He also halted all cargo flights into Iraqi Kurdistan.
