Kurdistan's Oil Industry Standoff Intensifies

Some 450,000 barrels per day of oil exports from the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq remain shut in amid an intractable dispute over who should control the region’s oil sales.  For the smaller oil companies operating there, it is now a choice that is really not a choice at all: Either redirect Kurdish oil exports through a newly completed Iraqi pipeline controlled by Baghdad or resume flows through the Kurdish pipeline to Turkey (which Turkey turned back on in October). The first option would make it extremely difficult–if not…