Crude prices have climbed this week as clashes between Iraqi government troops and forces from the semiautonomous Kurdish region disrupted some oil production and exports. Kurds voted nearly unanimously to break away from Iraq in a controversial independence referendum late last month. As operations have restarted in Iraq’s northern oil fields, about half of production capacity in the region’s largest fields appears to be down, according to oil consultancy Kayrros. An employee checks pipelines at an oil field west of Kirkuk in Iraq. On Thursday, oil supplies that flow from Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, through Turkey fell to around 196,000 barrels a day, compared with an usual supply of around 600,000 barrels a day, according to Dutch bank ING Group. “A prolonged disruption to this supply could tighten the oil market in Europe,” analysts at ING said. Meanwhile, the head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said […]