Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was misquoted as saying the central government would honour Kurdish production-sharing oil contracts, Deputy Prime Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani said on Monday.
Shares in Norwegian oil firm DNO had moved sharply higher on Monday on a media report quoting Maliki as saying Iraq would honour Kurdish production-sharing contracts like that of DNO.
"All the contracts we (the central government) have signed were service contracts and we expect that all these (Kurdish) production-sharing contracts should be amended to be service contracts in order to be approved" by the Baghdad government, Shahristani, the deputy prime minister for energy, told Reuters.
The weekend report by news agency AFP seemed to catch senior Iraqi oil officials by surprise.
"In fact this was a misunderstanding and misquoting by the AFP of what the prime minister said," Shahristani said. "It did not actually represent the position of the prime minister and the Iraqi government towards this issue."
Shahristani said the Kurdish contracts had not yet been reviewed by the central government.