Iraq’s Kurdish region has signed an exploration deal with Exxon Mobil, a Kurdish official said on Sunday... Iraq’s central government, which has long-running disputes with the Kurdish region over oil and land, has said Baghdad would consider a deal between Exxon and the KRG illegal...

“It is a binding contract,” [Natural Resources Minister Ashti] Hawrami said at an oil and gas conference in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. “It was signed completely on the 18th of October 2011”..

Baghdad disputes the validity of the contracts, saying it has the right to control development of the world’s fourth largest oil reserves.