Ankara and Baghdad renew the Kirkuk pipeline for a year at 750,000 barrels a day

Turkey's state firm Botas and Iraq's state oil companies Somo and NOC signed a one-year transit deal on Saturday for the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, a week after the previous arrangement lapsed and four days after Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi visited Ankara. Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said the arrangement covers a daily capacity of 750,000 barrels; the line currently carries about 170,000 barrels against a maximum of 1.5 million. Its weight comes from Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, which knocked out most of Iraq's oil exports and left the Mediterranean pipeline as Baghdad's only functioning export route.

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