The $12 million payment to Gulf Keystone comes amid greater optimism about the semiautonomous Kurdish government’s ability to pay oil companies , which say they are owed over $1 billion for crude exports from the region. Kurdistan has failed to pay the companies as it wages an expensive fight with Islamic State and is struggling to pay its own government workers. Adding to the woes, oil prices are down by more than half in the past 15 months and Kurdistan is arguing with Baghdad over oil sales. But the increase of oil exports in recent months and the KRG’s independent sales from the Ceyhan oil terminal in Turkey have raised enough revenue for the government to cover its domestic budget as well as pay the oil companies, said Tony Hayward , the chairman of Genel Energy GENL 5.39 % PLC, the largest international oil producer in the region, and […]