What Turkey wants from Iraq to renew pipeline deal
Ankara is pushing for full control over the pipeline’s Turkish section and a capacity-allocation system, as arbitration battles with Baghdad drag on.
Ankara has been seeking a new agreement with Baghdad for the operation of the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline that will require Iraq to reserve capacity in advance for the oil it wants to export.
In July, Ankara gave a one-year notice that it was canceling the agreements governing the ITP, also known as the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries oil from the northeastern Iraqi province of Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean oil hub at Ceyhan.
Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said last week that Ankara is looking for a mechanism that is different from what already exists in the agreement.
"We are more or less looking for a capacity-allocation type of agreement,” he told journalists in Istanbul Dec. 3. “We will ask the central government the capacity they would like to have, and we will allocate it to them."
