Iraq oil min: recent oil deals with Kurds are illegal

BAGHDAD, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Oil and gas deals signed after February 2007 between foreign firms and the Kurdish regional government are illegal and the crude cannot legally be exported, Iraq's oil minister said on Monday.

Iraq's cabinet agreed a draft law for dividing the world's third largest oil reserves in February, but rows with the KRG, as well as objections from some Shi'ite and Sunni Arab politicians have slowed its progress.

The autonomous KRG announced this month it had signed a production-sharing contract with a unit of U.S.-based Hunt Oil Co. and with Impulse Energy Corp. In April it signed a service contract with the United Arab Emirate's Dana Gas DNA.AD.

"All these contracts have no legal base and do not fit with the existing laws, nor with the draft which has been agreed," Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told Reuters.

"What worries us about these contracts is their secrecy."

He said only Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation has the right to export crude.

"They have no right to take any of Iraq's oil without the approval of the Iraqi government and they cannot export from any of Iraq's export points," he added.

"In the current law and in the draft law agreed, SOMO is the only side that is allowed to contract for exporting Iraq's crude oil," he said. "Any other way of exporting crude is illegal and is considered smuggling."

Shahristani said four other contracts signed with the KRG before Baghdad passed a draft oil law in February will be reviewed by the Federal Council for Oil and Gas, once it is set up after the law is passed.

"We hold these firms to be legally responsible ... and we have warned them that they will bear the consequences."