Iraq completes preparations for new oil pipeline to Jordan

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq has completed preparations to implement a new oil pipeline project to export Iraqi crude through the Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, according to comments made on Friday by Iraqi Oil Minister Thamir Al-Ghadhban and Jordan's Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Hala Zawati. 

“The export capacity of the Basra-Aqaba pipeline, which runs through Jordan, is expected to reach one million barrels per day (bpd),” said Ghadhban in a statement, as quoted by the Petra news agency. 

The arrangements so far, he continued, include the pipeline’s “track, components, absorptive capacity, the mechanisms of linking it to the northern Kirkuk oil fields, funding sources, and implementation and operational means.”

Iraq and Jordan signed a 2013 pipeline agreement worth about $18 billion and announced that multiple financing options would be considered. The port of Aqaba, on the northern tip of the Red Sea, has long been a route for Iraqi imports and exports, while Oman has long relied on Iraqi oil.

A 1,700 km pipeline will have to be built from Iraq's southern port of Basra, through the province of Najaf, through vast desert regions of embattled Anbar Province, into Jordan, and down again to the southern port of Aqaba. 

Jordanian media quoted Zawati as saying that the project is awaiting the approval of the Iraqi Council of Ministers, to be followed by the signing of an agreement between Jordan and Iraq, and then implementation of the pipeline project would begin.

She visited Iraq earlier this year for a meeting with Iraqi officials after King Abdullah visited Iraq for the first time since 2008. Afterward, she said that the two neighbors had agreed during the ministerial meeting held in Baghdad to "move forward with the project that serves the interests of the two brotherly peoples by opening a new port for Iraq's oil exports and giving Jordan the right to buy 150,000 barrels of oil per day."

The cost of building the pipeline is estimated to be roughly $5 billion and will reportedly be financed through a construction, ownership, and operation contract.