Peregraf - Iraq's Minister of Oil, Basim Mohammed Khudair al-Abadi, travels to Turkey on Saturday at the head of a high-level delegation to sign an agreement on the transport and loading of Iraqi crude oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the port of Ceyhan, according to a statement from Iraq's Ministry of Oil.
The visit marks the latest step in weeks of negotiations between Baghdad and Ankara over the future of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, whose governing legal framework, dating back to a 1973 agreement and renewed for 15 years in 2010, formally expired on July 27.
A deal that has slipped past two deadlines
Despite that expiration, oil has continued to flow through the 970-kilometer pipeline, which links the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq to Turkey's Mediterranean export terminal at Ceyhan, even without a signed successor agreement in place.
Talks intensified through July. Iraq's state oil marketer, SOMO, had formally asked Ankara in June to extend the existing pact by at least a year while a replacement was negotiated; Turkey turned that down, saying the 1973-era framework no longer matched the pipeline's legal and commercial realities. Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar later said Turkey had told Baghdad roughly a year earlier that it did not intend to renew the 2010 deal in its existing form, citing the arbitration dispute it had produced, and had already sent Baghdad a draft of a broader replacement agreement.
On July 1, Bayraktar held talks in Ankara with a visiting Iraqi delegation that included Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Bahr al-Uloom, Deputy Oil Minister Naser Aziz Jabbar, and representatives from the Kurdistan Region's Ministry of Natural Resources. Two days later, on July 3, Amanj Rahim, Secretary of the Kurdistan Region Council of Ministers, announced that Baghdad and Ankara had agreed to sign a temporary protocol to keep Iraqi oil exports flowing through the Ceyhan pipeline, including crude produced in the Kurdistan Region, while the two governments worked toward a long-term agreement within one year.
Bayraktar then traveled to Baghdad on July 9, meeting separately with al-Abadi and Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi, and telling reporters afterward that the interim agreement had been "brought to the final stage." Speaking to reporters in Ankara on July 14, Bayraktar said Iraq had specifically requested a throughput of 750,000 barrels per day under the one-year interim deal, to be carried by Turkey's state pipeline operator, BOTAŞ, while the two sides continued negotiating what he called a new, comprehensive Iraq-Turkey Crude Oil Pipeline Agreement. Iraq's Oil Ministry has not published its own account of that figure.
A signing was widely expected to take place during al-Zaidi's own visit to Ankara on Tuesday, July 28, when he met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The two leaders witnessed the signing of three bilateral agreements, covering police training, youth and sports cooperation, and industrial property — none of them the pipeline deal itself. Erdoğan noted that the Iraq-Turkey Crude Oil Pipeline Agreement had expired the previous day and said both governments aimed to conclude a new, comprehensive energy cooperation agreement as soon as possible. He separately described Turkish Petroleum's (TPAO) participation in the Kirkuk production field as a historic step in bilateral energy cooperation. Saturday's visit by al-Abadi appears intended to close out the pipeline agreement that remained unfinished after that summit.
What the new agreement covers
The scope of the plan has grown well beyond that 750,000 bpd interim figure. During al-Zaidi's July 28 summit in Ankara, the prime minister told Erdoğan that Iraq was ready to supply up to 1 million barrels per day to Turkey through Iraqi pipelines — more than four times the roughly 180,000–200,000 barrels per day currently flowing from northern Iraq via Turkey, and well beyond even the volume Bayraktar had described days earlier as the near-term target. Erdoğan reacted to the announcement in real time, turning to Bayraktar on stage and reacting with visible enthusiasm to the figure. The pipeline's total designed capacity is estimated at 1.4 to 1.6 million barrels per day, meaning both the 750,000 bpd interim figure and al-Zaidi's 1 million bpd offer would fit within existing engineering capacity without requiring physical expansion.
Bayraktar has also floated a more ambitious, longer-term plan: extending the pipeline south to Basra and raising its capacity to roughly 2.5 million barrels per day, an expansion that would require new construction and could, he said, allow Kuwait and other Gulf states to route their own crude through the line. Turkey and Iraq have separately discussed building a parallel natural gas pipeline along the same corridor, potentially carrying gas from Qatar or other sources, though Bayraktar has described that idea as still at an early, conceptual stage with no timeline or cost estimate attached.
Iraqi and Kurdish officials have also described the arrangement as a transitional protocol meant to guarantee continued Iraqi oil exports — including crude from the Kurdistan Region — while Baghdad and Ankara negotiate a more permanent framework within the following year.
Why the pipeline matters now
The push to formalize the agreement comes as Iraq works to diversify its crude export routes away from the Strait of Hormuz, following disruptions linked to the wider regional conflict. Iraq's Oil Ministry has said the country's total production capacity has surpassed 4.8 million barrels per day, and Baghdad is simultaneously pursuing a separate export route through Syria's Baniyas terminal, alongside the long-standing Ceyhan corridor.
The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline itself has a troubled recent history. It was closed to independent Kurdistan Region exports from March 2023, after a Paris-based arbitration tribunal ruled that Turkey had allowed unauthorized exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018 without Baghdad's approval, ordering Turkey to pay Iraq $1.5 billion in damages. Flows resumed toward the end of 2025 under Baghdad's exclusive control. Bayraktar has said the 2014–2018 dispute is now in an enforcement phase before a tribunal in Washington, which will calculate mutual claims and interest before determining which side is ultimately owed money, while a separate arbitration case covering the period after 2018 remains ongoing.
Turkish officials have framed the current negotiations as part of a broader ambition to position the Kirkuk-Ceyhan corridor as a regional energy hub, potentially including new connections extending toward southern Iraq. Iraqi officials, for their part, have said they see no objection to Turkish companies taking part in developing Iraqi oil fields, beyond Ankara's traditional role in transporting crude through the pipeline.