Iraq seeks to revive oil pipeline through Saudi Arabia

Iraq is banking on improved relations with neighbouring Saudi Arabia to revive a four-decade-old pipeline that had carried Iraqi crude to the Red Sea away from the perilous Strait of Hormuz.

Opec’s second-largest oil producer, Iraq is intensifying its bid to bypass the strait after exports from southern oilfields that pump 80 percent of the country’s crude output plunged to near zero following Iran’s closure of the strategic waterway.

The Iraqi oil ministry is devising a plan to resume crude exports through various means, an official said this week.

Iraq has started transporting fuel oil through Syria and is in touch with the Saudis for a potential revival of the pipeline, ministry spokesman Saheb Yazin said.

“We are trying to reach an understanding with Saudi Arabia to reopen the Iraqi oil pipeline that has been shut since 1991,” Yazin told the state news agency.

The pipeline, built in the early 1980s, had a designed capacity of around 1.6 million barrels per day before being shut by Riyadh following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The conduit stretches from Iraq’s southern Az Zubayr port through Saudi Arabian desert to the Saudi Red Sea port of Yanbu, according to the Iraqi ministry.

Baghdad had in the past sought to revive the pipeline but was rebuffed by Saudi Arabia due to strained relations and persistent political tensions in Iraq.

Further reading:

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• Robin Mills: Iraq must act fast to avoid a domestic energy crisis
• Iran turmoil threatens Iraq’s tentative business recovery

Experts said the Saudi pipeline is one of several options considered by Iraq to diversify export routes amid the US-Israeli war on Iran but noted that such a restart would require an agreement between Baghdad and Riyadh.

“This pipeline has been in an unused state for many years so we don’t know its exact condition and whether it will work now,” said Nabil Al-Marsoumi, an economics and energy professor at Al-Maqam University in Basra.

“Using this pipeline requires long negotiations on its ownership, management and other issues… there should be an agreement if Iraq wants to use the pipeline.”

Iraq said earlier this month it intends to build a pipeline from Basra to Syria and possibly Jordan. There are also plans to store 10 million barrels of Iraqi crude in Oman and construct a pipeline to the southern port of Duqm, officials said last year.