Barclays Plc has warned that Iraq’s oil production is at risk for the upcoming winter when “loading problems” emerge and reduce output by 300,000 to 500,000 b/d, reported Bloomberg.

Loading facilities and the nation’s single-point mooring systems are “insufficient for the winter season,” said Barclays analyst Michael Cohen.

Shipments from Basra in the south have also been slowed by strong winds during the first part of the year.

Iraq is facing export problems in the Kurdistan region as well, despite technically winning a legal battle with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).

This was after a US appellate court upheld a previous ruling that required the KRG to give the central government in Baghdad notice of plans to sell oil in the United States, to cite The National.

The Kurdish Ministry of Natural Resources in Erbil, however, insisted that the “state of play remains the same.”

“There is no prohibition on the KRG’s export of oil to the United States or elsewhere, and the KRG will continue to export hydrocarbons as the Iraqi constitution permits”, the ministry said in a statement.

Iraq’s federal government had filed a lawsuit in a US court last year to prevent the sale of the one million barrel cargo of a Kurdish tanker.

Kurdish exports had been reduced also thanks to attacks on pipelines going out of Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, according to Reuters.

“Without such revenue, salaries of peshmerga forces, the security forces and other key government workers cannot get paid,” the resources ministry said in a statement. “These treacherous acts of theft and sabotage harm the ability of Kurds across the region to fight Islamic State terrorism.”