Pipeline repairs raise prospect of alternate Turkey export route

Iraq has made significant progress on repairs to the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP), raising the possibility of restarting crude exports from northern Iraq with an alternate route that could bypass political disputes between Baghdad and Erbil.

The exact timeline for completion of the repair work remains unclear, and four different Iraqi oil officials gave varying levels of optimism around the project. Two officials said the repair work was 80 to 90 percent complete, with one saying that the ITP could start coming online at the beginning of April. But two other officials from the company said a restart was still months away.

The April estimate was “extremely over-optimistic,” one official said.

“The pipeline will be operable in the next few months,” another official said.