The thorny dispute over Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil riches is likely to heat up in the weeks ahead, aggravating tensions in a flashpoint region at a time when al-Qaida bombers are wreaking havoc across the country spurred by the civil war raging in next-door Syria. The semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in the Kurdish enclave that spans three provinces in northern Iraq wants to export its oil and natural gas to neighboring Turkey through pipelines to be built by Ankara. Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad refuses to allow that and insists that the oil in question belongs to the state, and if it’s shipped north to Turkey should flow through state-controlled pipelines running from the Kirkuk oil fields to Turkey’s Mediterranean export terminal at Ceyhan. A few weeks ago, it looked like the KRG, headquartered in the city of Erbil, and Ankara had after months […]