Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil sector suffered a turbulent 2016 marred by attacks on export infrastructure, geological downgrades and failure to pay IOCs in a timely and reliable fashion.

Despite paying off around $350mn of prepayments to its crude offtakers in January-November 2016, it still has almost $2bn outstanding which will continue to hamper efforts to pay public sector wages, not to mention the $3.5bn owed to IOCs active in the region’s upstream (MEES, 16 December 2016). (CONTINUED - 1764 WORDS)