ISTANBUL

Oil shipments through the Iraq-Türkiye pipeline resumed on Saturday after two-and-a-half years, in a move expected to strengthen Türkiye’s energy supply and add diversity to global markets.

Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Saturday that flows resumed at 7.07 am local time (0407GMT) through the pipeline, which had been shut since the Feb. 6, 2023 earthquakes but was declared operational by the Turkish energy company BOTAS in October of that year.

The twin-line pipeline, with a combined capacity of about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), connects oil fields in Iraq, including those in the Kurdish regional administration (KRG), to the Mediterranean export terminal at the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry said crude produced in the region would be delivered to Iraq's State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), and exported via Ceyhan under an agreement with the KRG and producing companies. Initial shipments are expected to average about 200,000 bpd.

Bayraktar had told Anadolu in July that if the pipeline returns to full capacity, Iraq could send up to 40% of its roughly 4 million bpd of exports through Türkiye, creating as much as $40 billion in annual trade potential.

Pipeline capacity tops 1M bpd, about 1% of world output

John Roberts, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, told Anadolu that the reopening is “helpful, but not crucial.”

“The line can carry more than a million barrels a day, about 1% of world production,” Roberts said. “That is a lot of oil, and it helps in terms of general supplies.”

“But Europe is not short of oil, and consumption there plays a smaller role in the energy balance than it used to," he added. "So getting the pipeline back into action helps, but it’s not vital.”

The resumption of oil flows “eases Türkiye's own energy balance, even though some of that will be crude oil for export at Ceyhan,” he added.

New energy axis from Gulf to Mediterranean

Francesco Sassi, a political scientist at the University of Oslo, said the resumption has little impact on European energy security but signals shifting geopolitics.

“The implications for the wider EU and regional energy markets of the pipeline’s resumption are not particularly evident in terms of energy security, as in these last two and a half years, operators managed to find alternative supplies, especially in the last year of supply glut and lower prices,” Sassi said. “As of today, the resumption tells more about the constitution of an Iraq-Türkiye-KRG energy triangle where the first two partners are preponderant players in regional energy geopolitics.”

He added that Iraq needs to reduce its reliance on the Strait of Hormuz, where transit threats have flared amid regional tensions, while Baghdad and Ankara are pushing to resolve disputes with the KRG.

“The renewed push in both capitals aims at handling energy insecurities while creating a political and economic axis stretching from the Gulf countries to the Mediterranean Sea,” Sassi said.