ABSTRACT

A key KRG strategic objective was the achievement of financial independence and finding alternatives to negative patronage through producing and exporting oil. To achieve these goals, the KRI actively invested in its newly discovered oil wealth. The KRG provided relatively lucrative oil contracts and a friendly environment for tens of IOCs as it portrayed itself as an emerging regional oil power. The KRI oil policy was formulated as oil for external support and patronage and creating an independent economy. These developments contributed to the transformation of the KRI to the most developed form of quasi-statehood in modern Kurdish history.