ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi oil ministry said late Monday that the Turkish government has officially expressed its willingness to renew the 1973 oil export agreement with Baghdad and expand it to other fields, a day after Ankara announced the end of the deal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not renew the 1973 Iraq-Turkey oil export agreement and the deal is set to be terminated in 2026, the country’s official gazette announced on Monday.
The agreement stipulates that the deal will be considered extended unless a termination note is sent by one of the parties one year before its expiration. The state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) late Monday cited an official from the Iraqi oil ministry as saying that based on this Ankara has sent a letter to Baghdad “expressing its desire to renew the agreement and attaching a draft of a new agreement for cooperation in the energy field that is more comprehensive than the previous agreement, as it included cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, petrochemical industries, and electricity in order to expand the horizons of cooperation between the two countries."
The unnamed source added that both sides have been negotiating a new deal since July 2014, noting that the Iraqi oil ministry “is in the process of reviewing the draft agreement sent by the Turkish side and negotiating with them about it to reach a formula that serves the interests of Iraq and Turkey."
Turkey has confirmed sending the letter to Iraq.
The agreement was first signed between the Turkish and Iraqi governments on August 27, 1973, and has been renewed repeatedly over the years, most recently in 2010.
The Iraq-Turkey crude oil pipeline was built to transport crude oil from Kirkuk and other fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
The development comes amid renewed efforts by the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to resume long-stalled oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline.
Oil exports from the Kurdistan Region through the pipeline have been halted since March 2023 when a Paris-based arbitration court ruled in favor of Baghdad against Ankara, saying the latter had violated the 1973 pipeline agreement by allowing Erbil to begin exporting oil independently in 2014.
