Iraq Eyes Syria Truck Route to Bypass Hormuz Oil Risk
Yousef Qiblawy, CEO of the Syrian Petroleum Company, told Bloomberg that Baghdad has asked for help exporting crude in addition to the fuel oil it already sends, and that an agreement between the two governments is close to completion.
The first crude convoys could arrive by mid-October, Qiblawy said, adding that his company intends to supply storage tanks at Baniyas, where the oil would be loaded onto vessels for export.
The plan would build on an existing overland corridor that moves Iraqi fuel oil to Syria’s Mediterranean coast. About 1,000 trucks now haul fuel oil along it every day, each carrying 220 barrels, according to Qiblawy, who expects a similar or larger fleet for crude.
At those numbers, 1,000 trucks would move 220,000 barrels a day, a figure that shows both the route’s potential and the logistical strain of shifting large oil volumes by road.
Separate remarks from a Syrian official point to the scale of existing transit activity. Ahmed Qubbaji, the petroleum company’s deputy chief executive for transportation and storage, told a state news agency on Sept. 27 that between 1,000 and 1,200 trucks crossed Syrian territory each day.
Traffic also flows the other way. In late September, Syria began trucking imported gasoline from Baniyas to Iraq under a renewable three-month agreement, with plans to raise volumes to 200 trucks daily.
The two countries are also pursuing a bigger export outlet by rehabilitating the Haditha-Baniyas pipeline, historically tied to the Kirkuk-Baniyas route. The news agency reported in July that Syria signed agreements with Iraq and an international consortium to advance the project, which targets capacity of 2 million barrels daily. That figure is planned capacity, not an operating export route.
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