US judge says unable to seize Kurdish oil
A high-stakes dispute over a tanker carrying $100m in Iraqi Kurdish crude oil took a surprising turn when a US judge said she lacked jurisdiction given the ship's distance from the shore and urged that the case be settled in Iraq.
Baghdad's lawyers had laid claim to the oil in a lawsuit, saying the country's autonomous Kurdistan region sold the oil without permission from the central government.
The central government insists it has the sole right to export Iraqi resources, including those from the northern Kurdish region, which gained de facto autonomy after US-led forces defeated Saddam Hussein in 1991.
Federal magistrate Nancy K Johnson said that because the tanker was some 100km off the Texas shore, and outside territorial waters, an order she issued late on Monday for US Marshals to seize the cargo could not be enforced.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/us-judge-says-unable-seize-kurdish-oil-201472922619290764.html
