Kurdish authorities in the oil-rich north of Iraq agreed to award South Korean countries contracts worth $12 billion in oilfield development contracts, news agency Reuters reported Thursday.

The deals are likely to irk to Baghdad, as they come just a day after Iraq decided a national budget that gave the Kurdish north 17 percent of the national budget of some $60 billion.

Reuters reported two consortia stood to gain: a four-company alliance lead by state-run Korea National Oil Corp and a building bloc of Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co and another four.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has launced a foreign investment drive backed by some U.S. trade bodies under the banner The Kurdistan Region: Invest in the Future. Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani was in the Korean capital wrapping up a whirlwind tour of the U.S. and Korea chambers of commerce when he announced the deal was not in defiance of Iraq’s American-backed constitution.