A $15 Billion Estimate
Rehabilitating and building an oil pipeline between Iraq and Syria would take at least four years and cost no less than $15 billion (USD), according to two people familiar with the project. The figures run well beyond an earlier expectation from United States officials that the line could be finished in roughly two years.
The timeline could stretch further if the work includes removing sections of the old infrastructure and completing procedures to secure new land-use rights from the Syrian government.
Route to the Mediterranean
The project would revive a crude corridor historically tied to the Kirkuk-Banias route, carrying Iraqi oil to export markets on the Mediterranean Sea. A new line would need to connect to the West Qurna 2 and Nasiriya fields in southern Iraq.
Once rehabilitated, the pipeline's initial transport capacity could reach two million barrels of crude per day, according to the United States State Department.
Chevron and the Coalition
An international coalition of Chevron, UCC Holding and TI Capital has agreed to prepare the technical and financial studies for the project. Chevron is separately in talks to invest in the West Qurna 2 and Nasiriya fields that would feed the line.
The company said it still needs to complete those studies to determine whether the existing pipeline requires rehabilitation, expansion or full reconstruction, and has not yet estimated the project's eventual export capacity. Pipelines of this kind, it noted, rarely run at full capacity from the first day.
Washington's Backing
The United States State Department welcomed the plan as a priority in infrastructure and a project of strategic importance, describing it as the restoration of a vital energy corridor linking Iraqi production to markets across the Mediterranean and beyond.
United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that he expects the strategic weight of the Strait of Hormuz to ease over the next two years as more oil and gas moves by land. About 20 percent of the world's oil and gas exports passed through the strait before the war.
What It Means for Syria
Last month Syria signed two memoranda of understanding, one with Iraq and one with the international coalition, to revive the pipeline during meetings held in the United States. The first covered rehabilitation of the line; the second set the coalition to prepare technical and financial studies and lay the groundwork for implementation.
For Damascus, the arrangement positions the country as a transit route for Iraqi crude and a destination for foreign investment in its oil and gas sector, though the multi-year timeline and outstanding land and infrastructure questions leave the payoff some distance away.