Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) forces have taken control of the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oil fields in the north of Iraq amid an ongoing dispute with the central government in Baghdad.

Erbil said in a statement on 11 July that staff from the state-owned North Oil Company, which operated the fields, have been asked to cooperate with KRG or leave the facilities.

The combined capacity of the two fields is about 465,000 barrels a day (b/d), representing over 80 per cent of crude production capacity in the north of Iraq.

The divisions between the KRG and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have intensified in the recent weeks with Kurdish MPs walking out of the first sessions in Iraq’s new parliament.

Kurdish forces moved into areas next to the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan after Iraqi security forces abandoned their positions in the face of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) insurgency.

KRG Prime Minister Massoud Barzani plans to hold a referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan over the coming months, which could include the areas of Kirkuk province recently seized.

Iraq’s oil ministry denounced the seizure of oil fields in Kirkuk, claiming that the facilities’ existing workers were forced out by KRG armed forces.

“These forces were supposed to help the Iraqi security forces to defeat the terrorist gangs and protect the people and their fortune,” said the oil ministry in a statement on 11 July. “But instead they took advantage of the bad exceptional circumstances in Iraq and they initiated their raids over those important oil locations after that they seized them.”

KRG claims that it secured the oil fields after learning of orders by the ministry of oil to sabotage a pipeline infrastructure linking the Avanah dome in Kirkuk province with the Khurmala field – a disputed area of the Kirkuk field that lies in the Erbil province of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“The KRG expects production at these fields to continue normally,” the Kurdish government said.