LONDON: Oil producers including Genel and Gulf Keystone Petroleum, have received initial payments for oil exports from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), paving the way for more steady oil revenues for producers in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Genel said on Tuesday the partners operating the Taq Taq oil field had received an initial gross payment of $30 million from the KRG for oil exported via the KRI-Turkey pipeline.
Partners in the Tawke oil field, majority owned by Norway's DNO, are also expecting to receive a $30 million gross payment from the KRG, Genel said.
The London-listed oil producer's own share of these payments is $24 million, it said.
"Payments are expected to become more regular and predictable once the KRG reaches budget equilibrium in early 2015," it added.
Shares in the companies rose after the news, with Genel up 5.4 percent and DNO gaining 4.4 percent in early trading.
Oil exports from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan have been a thorn in the side of the central Iraqi government which had stopped paying KRG civil servants in protest against oil exports to Turkey.
As a result of the tensions, the KRG had been unable to pay oil producers for oil exports.
The two sides reached an agreement on oil exports from Kurdistan last month, with the central Iraqi government in Baghdad resuming salary payments to the KRG.
In early November the KRG promised to pay oil producers an initial $75 million and to start making more regular payments.
The first such payments have now been made, with oil producer GKP also announcing the receipt of $15 million for crude exports from its Shaikan oil field.
"We continue to have constructive discussions with the KRG in relation to receiving payment in full for our oil sales," GKP Chief Executive John Gerstenlauer said in a statement on Monday.
Shares in GKP surged 6.2 percent in early trading.
GKP's partner MOL said it welcomed the news and that it would receive its share of the $15 million payment under terms of a partners' production sharing agreement.
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