Iraq’s self-ruled northern Kurdish region has resumed pumping crude oil earmarked for export through the central government’s pipeline after halting it for four months over what Kurdish authorities called a payment dispute. The region’s natural resources minister, Ashti Hawrami, said Wednesday that the pumping started the day before, and that flow was expected to reach 100,000 barrels a day this week. In 2011, a tentative deal was reached between the two administrations to allow the Kurds to send crude to Baghdad, which then sells it. Each side takes half of the revenues. But pumping was stopped in April by the Kurds, who asserted that Baghdad failed to send them the money. The Kurds and Baghdad are in a long-running dispute over the right to develop the region’s resources.

Also on Wednesday, a car bomb killed 11 people when it exploded shortly after sunset near a gathering of Shiite Muslims south of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. Hours earlier, gunmen shot dead eight members of a family in their house north of Baghdad. The police said the assailants broke into the home of a well-known lawyer in the city of Beiji, killing him, his wife, his five sons and another relative. The attack followed a threat last month by Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch to kill judges and investigators.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/middleeast/iraq-after-standoff-kurds-resume-pumping-oil-for-iraq-exports.html