Iraqi Kurdistan startedloading oil from its new pipeline for shipment from a Turkishport on Thursday, defying the Baghdad government, which claimssole authority over Iraqi crude and declares any independentlysold oil as ‘smuggled’. The cargo of 1 million barrels of crude oil was being loadedon a tanker in the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkish EnergyMinister Taner Yildiz told Reuters on Thursday. “Loading will be completed today,” Yildiz said, declining toname the buyer. The sale is likely to infuriate Baghdad, which has been atloggerheads with the autonomous Kurdish region over the sharingof oil revenues, and denounced Turkey’s courtship of the Kurds,warning that steps towards Kurdish economic independence […]