Report: Israel Imports Oil from Iraqi Kurdistan
JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israel buys more than three-quarters of its oil from Iraqi Kurds, thereby helping to fund the fight against the Islamic State, the London-based Financial Times reported on Monday.
According to the report, Israel uses nearly a quarter of a million barrels a day, providing what some analysts say is a discreet way to help fund the Kurdish government in Erbil.
Between May and August, Israeli oil companies and refineries imported some 19 million barrels of crude oil at an estimated cost of $1 billion.
About a third of the Kurdish oil exported through Turkey's port of Ceyhan is shipped to Israel.
While Kurdish authorities would not specify details of its exports, the report quoted one Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) adviser saying the issue isn't where the oil goes.
"We do not care where the oil goes once we have delivered it to the traders," he reportedly said. "Our priority is getting the cash to fund our Peshmerga forces against Daesh [Islamic State] and to pay our civil servant salaries."
The report said the oil sales reflect a growing disconnect between the Kurds and Iraq. France, Italy and Greece are also importing more Kurdish oil.
Meanwhile, the KRG representative to the United States said the Obama administration has done little to help Peshmerga forces fight the Islamic State.
Kurdish forces have received only a fraction of promised U.S. military support, The Hill reported last June.
"President Obama's Iraq train-and-equip fund, which comes to $1.6 billion, gave us great hope that American weapons would be delivered in early 2015," said KRG representative Bayan Sami Abdul Rahmansaid. "But since the passage of the law approving the train-and-equip fund, the vast majority of those weapons have not been delivered."
While the Obama administration says it supports a united Iraq, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favors the establishment of an independent Kurdistan as part of a broad alliance of more moderate forces across the Middle East.
