Oil prices rose by 2% early on Monday, with the U.S. benchmark up above $70 a barrel again, driven up by a halt to Kurdistan’s 400,000-bpd of crude exports and signs of easing concerns about the global banking sector.
The recent signing by Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad of three long-term oil and gas sector contracts with the UAE’s Crescent Petroleum – a company also heavily involved in the same sectors of Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan – may indicate that the ban on international oil companies (IOCs) trying to operate in both regions has now been relaxed by Baghdad.