Against the backdrop of lingering shipping instability in the Strait of Hormuz, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has put forward a plan for a radical overhaul of export routes. IEA Chief Executive Fatih Birol called for the construction of a new main oil pipeline that would directly link Iraq’s southern fields in Basra with Turkey’s Ceyhan export terminal on the Mediterranean coast.
The initiative’s primary goal is to create a permanent overland alternative to the strategic sea route, whose logistics are regularly disrupted by unpredictable actions from Iran.
Right now, Baghdad is critically vulnerable: roughly 90% of all Iraqi oil exports depend on transit through the Strait of Hormuz. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, Fatih Birol stressed the gravity of the situation, saying that “a broken vase is extremely difficult to glue back together.” According to the IEA head, the Basra–Ceyhan pipeline has outgrown the status of an ordinary infrastructure project. It is now strategically essential for both Baghdad and Ankara, and a critically important tool for ensuring the energy security of European buyers.
The IEA proposal comes amid the collapse of traditional transit corridors in the Middle East. The US-backed India–Middle East–Europe corridor (IMEC) is effectively frozen, and commercial navigation in the Red Sea remains a high-risk zone. In these circumstances, Turkey is actively positioning itself as the primary and safest logistics hub for transporting energy resources from the Persian Gulf to EU markets.
Practical implementation of the pipeline project will require a firm political agreement between the administrations of Turkey and Iraq. Fatih Birol views the prospects for such a consensus positively, calling the current geopolitical moment “absolutely suitable” for a start. The main barrier for cross-border initiatives like this is commonly the capital attraction issue, but the IEA chief indicated that financing could be provided by Europe, which has a direct interest in diversifying supplies.