Iraq-Syria Pipeline To 'Bypass' Hormuz Likely To Take Four Years, $15BN To Build
Iraq's plan to build a pipeline to export oil through Syria and partially bypass the Strait of Hormuz will likely take four years to complete and cost $15 billion, Reuters reported on Monday.
Iraq urgently seeks new outlets for its oil exports, which have plummeted since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US-Israel war on the Islamic Republic that started in February.
In July, Baghdad exported only 35.5 million barrels through its Basra ports via the Strait of Hormuz, according to the state-run oil firm SOMO. Before the war, Iraq exported about 108 million barrels of oil per month.
The fall in exports has created a budget crisis, as Iraq relies on oil revenues to fund 90 percent of its spending.
Iraq and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding in Washington in July to revive a historic pipeline linking the Kirkuk fields to the Syrian port city of Banias on the Mediterranean Sea.
A separate agreement was signed with a consortium including Chevron, UCC Holding, and TI Capital to undertake technical and financial studies for the pipeline's reconstruction.
The pipeline is expected to transport 2 million barrels per day to the Syrian port, where the crude can then be shipped to Europe by tanker.
But a planned pipeline to export via Syria may not provide an alternative to Hormuz as soon as Iraqi officials had hoped.
"Both sources said the plan would require laying entirely new infrastructure rather than rehabilitating the existing pipeline and cost at least $15 billion," Reuters reported.
Rebuilding the pipeline could take as long as four years because it has been unused since the 1980s and is extensively damaged.
Even the intact sections of that pipeline would have to be replaced as they are not compatible with newly developed specifications, one of the sources said.
An entirely new integrated crude oil pipeline system linking Iraq's southern and northern fields to a central hub in Haditha, in western Iraq, would also have to be built, the second source stated.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 9, 2026
The Strait of Hormuz is never going back to the way it was because the Iranians have used, or tried to use it, as a choke point.
Over the next two years, the Strait of Hormuz is going to become irrelevant.
It is going to become just another… pic.twitter.com/6dmYCA8HkU
The four-year timeline is also well beyond the two-year period estimated by US Treasury Scott Bessent for Hormuz to become "irrelevant" due to the construction of new underground pipelines by the Gulf states.