Authorities in Iraq’s cash-strapped Kurdish region will withhold delivery of oil to the central government and export crude independently in 2016 to ensure revenue amid a global price slump, according to a senior lawmaker in the territory’s parliament. The central government in Baghdad wasn’t committed last year to paying the self-ruled Kurdistan Regional Government its 17 percent share of the federal budget, and this lack of commitment persists in 2016, said Izzat Sabir Ismael, chairman of the Kurdish parliament’s finance and economic affairs committee. Ismael also serves on the KRG’s parliamentary committee for energy, industry and natural resources. “Oil prices are low, and government revenues in 2015 were about $50 billion at best, which means half of what has been forecast,” he said in a phone interview. “If the KRG delivers to Baghdad the agreed quantity of 550,000 barrels a day, Baghdad will not be able to pay the […]