Basra protesters agree to halt oil field escalation after talks with government

BASRA — Protest leaders in Basra’s northern Sadiq district agreed with a government delegation on Saturday to shelve plans to enter the area’s oil fields and keep to peaceful sit-ins, in return for work on their service demands.

Under the deal, reached at a meeting of government officials, lawmakers and protest representatives, the state’s public works machinery is to resume work in the district and paving is to begin on its roads.

The two sides also agreed to arrange a meeting at parliament between protest representatives, members of parliament’s Finance Committee and officials from the ministries concerned to follow up on the demands.

The deal came after the protesters’ three-day deadline ran out Friday. On Tuesday, protesters from tribes and communities in Basra’s northern Qurna and Sadiq districts shut Station 8 at the West Qurna 1 oil field, demanding services and jobs, and threatened to shut all the oil fields in the area if the federal and local governments did not act.

At the meeting, Haitham al-Mansouri, who leads the Sadiq protest movement, blamed the federal government rather than Basra’s local administration for the lack of services. He said Basra’s “financial springs have dried up.”

Mansouri said the movement had a road map with the previous federal government and had made progress under it, with many official letters signed and issued by former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government had frozen those measures, he said. He did not say what the letters covered.

Aqeel al-Khalidi, a lawmaker from the Tasmim Alliance of Basra Governor Asaad al-Eidani, also criticized Baghdad. He said the federal government belittled Basra and did not give the governorate its due. He said Basra’s people were good-natured but warned: “Fear the patient man today,” echoing an Arabic proverb.

Basra lawmakers on Wednesday called for a sovereign fund under parliament’s oversight to rebuild the governorate and backed the protests, including the open-ended sit-in near West Qurna 1. They called for a government delegation led by Zaidi to meet residents and proposed a parliamentary committee to follow up on the demands.

Earlier on Wednesday, Eidani warned that protesters who enter oil fields could face arrest warrants and even terrorism charges. In a voice message, he said the warning was meant to keep protesters safe, not to limit their demands. He said petrodollar payments, the per-barrel share of oil revenue that federal law sets aside for oil-producing governorates, had stopped in September 2024.

Mansouri’s movement paused an earlier round of protests in January 2025 after local authorities agreed to hire 1,000 unemployed residents and sign a contract for a district hospital.

West Qurna 1, one of Iraq’s largest oil fields, has been operated by China’s PetroChina since ExxonMobil left in early 2024.