Iraq to reactivate the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline
Ceyhan petroleum operations field. Photo: BOTAS
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A senior Iraqi official in the oil sector revealed that Baghdad is working on repairing a pipeline that might enable it to transfer 350,000 barrels per day to Turkey by the end of the month.
This development is expected to enrage international oil companies as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), according to Reuters.
Reopening the ten-year-old Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline would offer an alternative route to the Kurdistan region’s pipeline, which has been closed for a year due to an impasse in discussions between Baghdad and the KRG over the resumption of oil exports.
Production-sharing agreements between Iraqi Kurdistan and international corporations utilizing the KRG pipeline are unlawful in Baghdad’s eyes.
Oil firms will have to negotiate with the federal government in Baghdad to export their oil to Turkey through the reopened pipeline, which might infuriate the KRG, which depends on oil revenues.
The 960-kilometer (600-mile) pipeline’s exports were stopped in 2014 as a result of several attacks by ISIS terrorists. The pipeline used to handle 0.5 percent of the world’s supply.
The deputy oil minister for upstream affairs, Basim Mohammed, told Reuters that although repair work is still proceeding, a large crude pumping station with storage facilities has been finished.
Mohammed noted that the pipeline should be operational and ready to resume flows by the end of April.
Turkey stopped Iraq’s exports of 450,000 barrels per day through the oil pipeline that extends from the Kurdistan region of Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on March 25, 2023.
Turkey’s decision to suspend oil exports followed an arbitration decision issued by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris.
The decision obliged Turkey to pay Baghdad $1.5 billion in compensation for damages caused by the KRG’s export of oil without permission from the federal government in Baghdad between 2014 and 2018.
The KRG began exporting crude oil independently in 2013, a step Baghdad considered illegal.