Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline’s repairs completed
Ceyhan petroleum operations field. Photo: BOTAS
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A source in the North Oil Company (NOC) revealed on Wednesday that repairs to the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline have been completed.
The government’s directives to restart oil exports from the Kirkuk oilfields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan determine how oil pumping operations would proceed, according to Shafaq News.
After ISIS militants destroyed the Iraqi-Turkish oil pipeline, the NOC finished the required work to rebuild it. In particular, the operation involved repairing the damaged parts between the governorates of Nineveh, Salah Al-Din, and Kirkuk.
The NOC worked over the past months to replace the damaged parts and complete repairing the pipeline.
The oil pipeline is now ready to transport any quantity specified by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil to resume crude oil exports from the oilfields in Kirkuk to Turkey’s Ceyhan port on the Mediterranean.
In early October 2023, the Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Alparslan Bayraktar, confirmed that the crude oil pipeline from Iraq to Turkey, which has been inoperative for about six months, is ready to operate and that Ankara is preparing to start receiving shipments.
Turkey stopped oil flows through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline in March 2023 after a ruling issued by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay $1.5 billion in compensation to Baghdad for unauthorized oil exports between 2014 and 2018.
The Kurdistan region of Iraq exported approximately 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day before the pipeline was closed. Ankara later began maintenance work on the pipeline, through which about 0.5 percent of global oil supplies pass.