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Türkiye sees a potential for higher energy cooperation with Iraq and is closely following efforts to restart oil flows via the pipeline between Kirkuk in Iraq’s northern Kurdish Regional Administration (KRG) and the Turkish city of Ceyhan, a top energy official said Saturday.
“Our Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline has been operating since the 1970s. Recently, a resumption of oil flow has been spoken about. We are closely following this with Iraq,” Deputy Energy and Natural Resources Minister Ahmet Berat Çonkar told Anadolu Agency (AA) during this weekend’s Baghdad International Energy Forum.
Underlining the significance of Turkish-Iraqi energy ties, Çonkar said: “They told us that negotiations between international oil companies, the regional (KRG) administration and the central (Baghdad) government are nearing a conclusion. God willing, once these issues are resolved, we expect the pipeline to be used at full capacity.”
Türkiye earlier this year announced it would end a decades-old pact, or the Türkiye-Iraq Crude Oil Pipeline Agreement, as of next year. Meanwhile, it also expressed a will to broaden collaboration by sending a draft proposal to Iraq to renew and broaden the energy agreement between the two countries to cover cooperation in oil, gas, petrochemicals and electricity.
The exports via the pipeline have been halted since 2023, following an arbitration ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) that Türkiye is appealing.
The ICC had ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion over what it said were unauthorized exports by Iraq’s KRG between 2014 and 2018. Türkiye, on the other hand, said the ICC had recognized most of Ankara’s demands.
Since then, Iraq and Türkiye have been working to resume oil flows from the pipeline.
Çonkar said the Türkiye-Iraq pipeline could be further developed from a broader perspective, adding that the two countries are also negotiating cooperation in natural gas, electricity and the Development Road Project as an energy corridor.
Analysts have earlier stressed a key role of the Development Road in the process, as it could expand the scope of cooperation between Ankara and Baghdad if negotiations proceed positively.
“The energy potential with Iraq is much higher than in the past,” Çonkar said, adding that efforts are ongoing to build the necessary infrastructure.
He also said the goal is to make energy cooperation in the region a driver of stability and prosperity, enabling a more confident outlook for the future.
“We are striving to take both the energy transformation and our long-standing relations with Iraq to a new phase,” Çonkar added.
