Kurdistan reasserted its right to export oil independently to the United States and other countries on Tuesday despite a court ruling in favor of the Iraqi federal government, which has sought to block crude sales from the autonomous region. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans on Monday dismissed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s bid to overturn an earlier ruling against a planned sale of oil to an unidentified buyer in the U.S. Iraq’s federal government filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court last year to thwart the sale of the one million barrel cargo from the Kurdistan region in an ongoing dispute over the right to export oil. The tanker was stuck off U.S. shores in legal limbo for six months before sailing to Israelwhere it was sold, rendering the Kurds’ appeal moot, the court said in Monday’s ruling.