Iraq and Turkey are “near” to signing a 12-month deal to continue pumping Iraqi crude oil through the Ceyhan pipeline, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Thursday.
The agreement is set to be signed “in the coming days”, Turkish Anadolu news agency quoted Mr Bayraktar as saying, after he met Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi and Oil Minister Bassem Mohammed Khudair in Baghdad.
The agreement will extend exports through the 970km pipeline that links Kirkuk to Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. It has been a main export route for northern Iraqi crude, including oil from the Kurdistan Region and fields operated by North Oil Company.
Iraq has been moving to secure alternative export routes since the Iran war led to a sharp supply collapse. Iraq's output fell 66 per cent, the steepest drop among Opec+ members. Production fell from 4.3 million barrels per day to 1.4 million in May, and flows through the Ceyhan pipeline dropped from 3.5 million bdp before the war to about 200,000.
Pumping through Ceyhan was halted in March 2023 after an arbitration ruling ordered Turkey to pay Iraq $1.5 billion for unauthorised exports between 2014 and 2018. The shutdown cut 400,000 to 500,000 bpd from global markets and forced Baghdad to transport oil by road, or store it.
Iraqi officials have said any new deal should include technical arrangements to resume flows and mechanisms to address outstanding financial disputes. They added that resuming exports is critical to meeting federal budget targets and to increase Iraq’s overall oil exports.
The pipeline has operated on and off since the 1970s and remains central to Iraq’s plans to raise production and diversify export routes. The current agreement is set to expire at the end of this month.
New oilfield development
Separately, Iraq's North Oil Company signed a contract with US-based HKN Energy on Thursday to develop the Hamrin oilfield, in the company's second push into northern Iraq in just over a year since its first attempt, a prospective deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, was rejected by Baghdad.
Mr Khudair said the new deal targets peak production of 140,000 bpd, with associated gas output projected at 40 million standard cubic feet a day.
Hamrin, in northern Iraq, had long been operated by the state-run NOC. However, production once averaged only 20,000 to 25,000 bpd, a fraction of the output target now.
In May 2025, HKN and ONEX Group signed a deal with the KRG's Ministry of Natural Resources to form a joint venture, Miran Energy, to develop the Miran gasfield. The deal was part of a package of KRG agreements with US firms valued by Erbil at more than $110 billion.
Iraq's Oil Ministry rejected that deal within days, calling it null and void, and asserting that oil and gas contracts must run through the federal government.
