2014-11-20 11:31:23

, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Thursday.

Yildiz was speaking during an Atlantic Council meeting in Istanbul after Kurdistan and the federal government in Baghdad reached a deal last week in the long standing dispute over the sharing of oil revenues, according to Reuters.

Yildiz said on Wednesday that Iraqi crude oil pumping to Turkey will resume soon at a rate of 150 thousand barrels per day, after a stop of eight months.

It is hoped that the Turkish minister will meet with Iraqi and Kurdish counterparts this week to discuss the program to resume pumping crude from Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.

Iraqi Minister of Finance , Hoshiyar Zebari announced on Wednesday that the Iraqi government and Kurdistan Region began implementing the agreement under which Baghdad will resume giving public employees' salaries in the region in exchange for a share of the Kurdish oil exports.

The agreement aims to reduce the differences between Baghdad and Kurdistan in a time face , both are facing a common threat from ISIS organization, which took over large parts of North and West of the country.

Under the reached agreement last week ,Kurdistan pledged to pump 140 thousand barrels of oil per day, or about half of the total Kurdish shipments to the export tankers of the Iraqi government in the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Baghdad agreed to pay $ 500 million allocated to the salaries of Kurdish employees.

Zebari said that Kurdistan government began pumping oil to the North Oil Company tankers in the port of Ceyhan on Tuesday and $ 500 million was transferred on Wednesday.

Zebari said in a news conference in Baghdad that there will be further payments.

Baghdad has cut Kurdistan's share of the budget in response to the region's oil plans. Although Kurdistan is suffering from a financial crisis, it has continued to pump oil through a separate pipeline to Turkey and exports increased in the recent period to about 300 thousand barrels per day.