Prime Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government Nechirvan Barzani met Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday.

Iraq says it has signed an agreement with BP over increasing the production of oil fields in the northern Kirkuk province which fell at the heart of tensions over the push for independence by the Kurds last year.  

Chevron says it plans to return to Iraq’s Kurdistan “in the near future” for new drilling operations. 

Police were also deployed en mass in the town of Ranya, where Kurdish security forces earlier fatally shot five protesters.

The parliament speaker of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan resigns amid fatal protests against the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Five protesters have been killed in Iraq’s Kurdistan region as mass rallies over widespread anger over unpaid salaries and corruption continue.

Iran’s Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh says an oil swap agreement would be signed with Iraq over the next few days – an agreement that he says would concern exports of oil from Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk.   

The former governor of Iraq’s northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk has reportedly fled to the United States with millions of petrodollars.

Iraq says a new pipeline would be built to export crude oil from the northern province of Kirkuk to Turkey following a rise in tensions with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). 

The UN mission in Iraq urges Kurdistan to abide by a recent top court ruling that declared a secession referendum unconstitutional.