HOUSTON – A Texas Judge has ordered U.S. Marshals to seize approximately 1,000,000 barrels of Kurdish crude oil.
The crude is parked in a massive tanker off the coast of Galveston.
The United Kalavrtva has been anchored roughly 57 miles from the Galveston coast, waiting to offload
the crude oil in Texas.
The U.S. Coast Guard had cleared the ship to unload the oil Sunday, but other forces were at play.
In a strange twist, Iraq's central government filed a civil lawsuit against the Kurds in U.S. District Court, in an attempt to block the sale of the oil.
U.S. Magistrate, Nancy Johnson issued the cargo seizure order Monday.
A Rice University professor said Monday the U.S. would find a way to block the Kurdish oil from being sold because the sale would be seen as undermining Iraq's fragile central government.
"If you want to have any chance of changing the central government you really can't allow the Kurds to do this," professor Richard Stoll said.
The intended buyer of the crude oil had not been independently confirmed by KPRC Local 2 as of Tuesday afternoon and the ultimate fate of the oil remained unclear.