ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa touched on prospects to export oil from western Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea via a major cross-border pipeline, Zaidi’s office said Wednesday, a day after Sharaa signaled his country as a prime “maritime gateway” for Baghdad.
The leaders “discussed a number of issues, including the export of Iraqi oil through the Baniyas pipeline, with an export capacity of up to two million barrels per day,” the statement from the Iraqi premier’s media office read.
Zaidi arrived in Damascus on Wednesday with measures to enhance economic ties at the top of his agenda, state media reported earlier.
Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding in July to restore and rehabilitate the roughly 890 kilometer-long Haditha-Baniyas pipeline that stretches from Iraq’s western Anbar province to Syria’s western coast.
The pipeline was rendered inoperable in 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Initial exports are estimated at around 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), a volume exclusively extracted from the oil-rich Kirkuk province east of Anbar. However, Iraq aims to establish a domestic network connecting its vast oil fields in the south to Haditha, hence scaling up the anticipated exports to more than 2 million bpd.
However, Youssef Qablawi, the former CEO of the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company said in August it would take between 30 months and three years to complete and operationalize the pipeline.
Meanwhile, Sharaa said in an interview on Tuesday that Syria “serves as Iraq’s maritime gateway" to the Mediterranean Sea, “irrespective of us being one or two different states.”
He further stated that his country is the “best and easiest” corridor for Iraq to reach the Mediterranean.
The Syrian president additionally pointed to trade ties, noting that exceeding 100,000 transit vehicles traversed Syrian territory in the last half-year, while over 40,000 cargo trucks facilitated cross-border commerce between Baghdad and Damascus.
Baghdad has already started exporting its crude through overland oil tanker trucks since April.
The Iraqi government has propelled the policy of diversifying export routes to the top of its strategic objectives.
The policy has gained prominence after the outbreak of the US-Israeli war against Iran in late February and the subsequent tensions between Washington and Tehran - skirmishes that have hindered maritime trafficking in and around the Strait of Hormuz.
Around 90 percent of Iraqi oil exports pass through the waterway. Iraq’s oil-dependent economy suffered significant blows during the first few months after the outbreak of the war, with exports recording historic slumps from an average of 93 million barrels of crude a month to 10 million in April.
Nevertheless, Baghdad said in mid-October that it has restored pre-war export levels even as efforts ramp up to diversify export routes.
