Baghdad offers Erbil 12.67 percent and demands 450,000 barrels a day it cannot yet observe

The cabinet set aside its Tuesday session, 10 November, for the draft 2027 federal budget, with the Kurdistan Region’s share, public-sector salaries and a disputed 450,000-barrels-a-day export requirement still unresolved; no reporting on the outcome of that session has surfaced. Kurdistan24, citing “information obtained,” reports the federal government has proposed allocating the Region 12.67 percent of the budget, roughly 13 trillion dinars, conditioned on that export volume. The KRG wants 14.14 percent, the population share it draws from the 2024 census, and rejected a federal figure of 12.68 percent in September, according to KRG cabinet statements reported by 964media. Both figures come from Kurdish-market outlets covering a negotiation in which Erbil is a party. Kurdistan24 adds its own caveat: a percentage written into a budget does not establish how much money actually reaches the KRG. Zaidi and Masrour Barzani met on 9 November on five files and, per the prime minister’s media office, “agreed on mechanisms” — a readout with no content attached.

The salary file shows what the mechanisms look like in practice. The KRG began paying October salaries on Sunday 8 November, four days after Baghdad sent the money, and only to staff registered in the MyAccount digital banking programme launched by Barzani in 2023. Civilian retirees and Peshmerga were paid first, with political prisoners, chemical-attack and Anfal victims, families of martyrs and education ministry employees scheduled for Monday. About 15,000 registered employees whose cards are not ready will be paid in cash again this month; 28,000 printed cards are sitting uncollected at government banks. Zaidi told KDP lawmakers on 3 November that his government would guarantee parity between Region employees' salaries and those elsewhere in the state. The KRG’s own scorecard, published 17 October, claims Baghdad transferred an average of 4.2 percent of the national budget to the Region over twelve years, covering 46 of 144 monthly payrolls — a figure Baghdad has not conceded.

The 450,000-barrel condition sits above anything anyone has put a name to. Two energy officials told Reuters on 4 November that Iraq exported about 3.5 million bpd in October with Ceyhan shipments at roughly 400,000 bpd. Three North Oil Company sources told Shafaq News on 1 November the northern route had risen from 350,000 to 500,000 bpd; a NOC source told Kurdistan24’s Kirkuk correspondent Soran Kamaran the same 500,000 figure, and Baz Karim Barzanji of the KAR Group, a shareholder in the Kurdistan Pipeline Company, wrote that exports had doubled from 250,000. On Kurdistan24’s own breakdown, trucked Basra crude accounts for about 200,000 bpd of the total and Kirkuk fields under NOC for 125,000 — leaving Kurdistan-origin volumes far short of 450,000. Iraq and Turkey signed a one-year deal on 1 August for at least 750,000 bpd. SOMO, in a document to parliament surfaced by Eco Iraq, reported 533 million barrels exported January to September for about $37.39 billion.

Assessment: Three baselines exist for Ceyhan — 250,000, 350,000 and Reuters' implied figure — and every count but the pipeline shareholder’s is anonymous. Treat 400,000 to 500,000 as a range, not a number, and note that an export quota written into a budget law is enforceable precisely because nobody can verify compliance: it becomes a reason to withhold. MyAccount works the same way. The real constraint arriving is the IMF, which will price Iraq’s payroll against a debt stock Zaidi has already put on the record. Erbil’s 4.2 percent scorecard and Baghdad’s satellite images belong to the same genre: self-published evidence in an unsettled argument.