clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Iraq, Saudi discuss reviving oil pipeline connection

May 25, 2023 at 1:33 pm

The Aramco Oil Refinery in Dahran, Saudi Arabia. [Photo by: MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images]

Iraq and Saudi Arabia have discussed reviving an oil pipeline connection that was effective in the 1970s and 1980s, a senior Iraqi official revealed yesterday.

“There are also thoughts about activating an oil pipeline that passed through Syria, in addition to a pipeline with Jordan,” Farhad Alaeddin, adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said in statements to the Economy East website.

In 1990, Saudi Arabia closed the pipeline which transported Iraqi crude oil to the Saudi port of Yanbu on the Red Sea after Baghdad’s invasion of Kuwait. The pipeline was constructed in the 1970s to diversify Iraqi export outlets, especially in light of Iran’s attack on Iraqi oil tankers in the Gulf at the time, prior to and during the Iran-Iraq War which lasted from September 1980 to August 1988.

READ: Saudi Arabia concludes deals to build world’s largest green hydrogen plant