BAGHDAD – Iraq’s northwest Nineveh province has started talks with oil companies and is drafting terms to attract investment in its significant oil and gas reserves, steps that are certain to antagonize the central government.

Nineveh Governor Atheel Nujaifi says Baghdad has focused on the giant southern oil fields and has paid little attention to developing resources in his province.

“We are not ready to wait for decades until the crude runs out from the south to start energy investment in Nineveh province,” he said in an interview.

The governor said he met with Exxon Mobil and other major oil companies to discuss investment opportunities.

“We listened to their proposals about how to best invest in Nineveh, but we did not sign deals,” he said.

Last month the provincial council of the predominantly Sunni Muslim governorate granted him the power to sign deals with foreign oil firms independently of Baghdad, which immediately rejected the move.

Iraq’s Shi’ite government claims sole authority over the exploration and export of all oil and gas resources.

“The government will not tolerate such a decision, whether from Nineveh or any other province,” a senior official said at the time.

That has not deterred Nineveh from following the example of the autonomous Kurdistan region in pursuing an increasingly independent energy policy.

Nineveh Province, whose capital is Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, is multiethnic. It contains a significant number of Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and Yazidis.