, appears to be the mystery American buyer of two cargoes of Kurdish crude delivered in May.

According to Reuters Americn news agency, followed by “Shafaq News", “Nearly two months prior to this week's standoff between the central government of Iraq and Kurdistan over a tanker near Texas with $100 million of Kurdish crude, a smaller ship with Kurdish oil discharged its cargo of heavy, sour Shaikan crude in Houston without any legal tangles, Reuters had reported. A second ship arrived later in May, data show.

The U.S. State Department said that it had no information on who bought May shipments.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration released on Wednesday, Houston Refining LP, owned by LyondellBasell, imported two cargoes of what was labeled Iraqi crude that match the size of the May shipments and had the distinct quality specifications of Kurdish Shaikan.

The data show two shipments of 266,000 and 267,000 barrels of crude oil, both with 4.6 percent sulfur content, far higher than typical Iraqi imports but in line with the Kurdish Shaikan variety, according to market sources familiar with the oil.

The report went on that LyondellBasell company did not respond to queries about the fact that contracts for the purchase of Kurdish crude , hinting to a spoksman of Blavatnik's global conglomerate Access Industries,  which has a stake in Lyondell, did not comment.

Blavatnik is a U.S. citizen born in Odessa in Russian-speaking parents and now ranked thirty-third among the richest men in the world after the sale of his stake in TNK - BP's Russian oil giant Rosneft, according to Forbes information.

The data shows the difficulty that Baghdad has seen in blocking the ability of Kurdistan on the sale of crude oil with the quest of its leaders to win more political and economic autonomy.