KRG prepares to link pipeline to politics

FEYSHKABOUR - Less than three kilometers from Iraq's border with Turkey, earth movers and trucks heave dirt and flatten a large patch of land next to an oil metering station. Fabrication has started as valves and sections of pipe lie in stacks, waiting to be assembled.

This will be the site of a new oil pipeline tie-in station that could by the end of the year allow the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to bypass federal Iraqi controls and export crude directly to Turkey's Mediterranean ports. Such infrastructure would help cement the independent oil policy that has driven the KRG's warming ties with Ankara and its deteriorating relationship with Baghdad.