The Federal Supreme Court of Iraq announced Monday it has begun deliberations on a possible lawsuit to challenge the Kurdistan Region’s independent oil exports abroad, initiated by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) without referring to Baghdad. The lawsuit was filed by the federal government’s Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi against KRG’s Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami, according to Ayas al-Samuk, spokesperson for the court. “The lawsuit’s parties attended the session in which the prosecution asked that a ruling that stipulates halting oil exports directly from the Kurdistan Region to outside of Iraq be made, and the funds from the sales in the past be retrieved since oil is the property of all of the Iraqi people,” Samuk said on Monday. Judge Medhat al-Mahmoud decided to include Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s Finance Minister, and KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani as “third party individuals… because the lawsuit has constitutional, political, and financial dimensions,” Samuk stated. Oil has long been a contentious issue between Erbil and Baghdad, and the federal government cut the KRG’s budget when Erbil expressed an intention to export oil independently. The court said that parties mentioned in the lawsuit had also participated in a hearing, where the Iraqi Oil Ministry asked for the export of oil by the KRG to cease, and for amounts sold in the past to be repaid to the Iraqi federal government. “To provide sufficient time for all parties to present their case, we have deferred the appeal to 6/5/2018,” the court explained.