Syria seeks to revive Iraq oil pipeline

Zawya

4 days ago

Syria's energy minister is planning to visit Iraq to push for the revival of the now-defunct pipeline that had carried crude oil from Iraq to a Syrian port on the Mediterranean Sea for many years in the past century.
Mohammed Al-Bashir said he would meet officials in Baghdad for talks on the rehabilitation of the damaged 850-kilometre pipeline which would supply crude to Syria and also provide a new outlet for Iraq to market its oil.
'I will visit Iraq soon to discuss the rehabilitation of the oil pipeline which links Iraq's Kirkuk city with the Syrian Baniyas port,' Al-Bashir said, quoted by Iraq's Sumeria news agency.
The agency said resuming oil flow through the pipeline would ensure sufficient crude supplies for Syria and allow it to slash a high bill of importing crude by tankers.
Iraqi government spokesman Bassim Al-Awadi said in early 2025 that Baghdad is thinking of reviving the pipeline to expand export outlets.
The pipeline, dating back to the early 1950s, linked Iraq's oil-rich Northern Kirkuk province with the Western Syrian port of Baniyas. It was crippled during the 1956 Suez crisis before it was rehabilitated in the following years.
Between 1982 and 2000 Iraq shut the pipeline due to political rifts with Syria and it was crippled after it sustained heavy damages during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
Over the past few years, Iraq has considered new outlets for its crude exports to lessen reliance on the risky Hormuz Strait and following the shutdown of a 970-km pipeline connecting Kirkuk with Ceyhan in Turkey due to rifts between Baghdad and Ankara.
One of the alternatives was the construction of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline from the Southern Iraqi port of Basra to Aqaba port in South Jordan. The plan was proposed a few years ago but it was suspended due to financial and security reasons.
'The Iraq-Syria pipeline is one of the vital projects that shaped the oil industry in Iraq and the entire region,' Iraqi Prime Minister's spokesman Mudhar Saleh said in statements early this year.
'Iraq remains in need to revive plans to expand its oil export outlets through the Mediterranean for its European clients…but this issue requires negotiations between the two countries because the pipeline's part in Syria had been aggressively nationalised by Damascus,' Saleh added.
Iraq, which controls the world's fifth largest proven oil deposits, is OPEC's second largest crude producer with current output of around 4.2 million barrels per day. It exports nearly 3.4 million bpd, mostly through the narrow Hormuz, the only gateway to the oil-oil Gulf.
(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)