To add details

ANKARA, July 29 (Reuters) - A proposed new energy agreement between Turkey and Iraq should include a mechanism to ensure full use of the oil pipeline between the two countries, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.

Ankara stated last week that the decades-old agreement covering the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline will expire in July 2026.

An Iraqi official said that Türkiye proposed expanding the scope of the agreement to include cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, petrochemicals, and electricity.

While outlining Türkiye's basic demands, Bayraktar added that his country requests that the draft agreement include "a mechanism to ensure the full use of this pipeline."

"The memorandum we sent is in line with this approach," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Monday.

"This pipeline has a capacity of about 1.5 million barrels per day. There is currently no flow. Even when there was flow, the pipeline was not operating at full capacity," he added.

The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline has been inoperable since 2023 after an arbitration court ruled that Ankara must pay Iraq $1.5 billion in compensation for damages caused by unauthorized exports from 2014 to 2018. Türkiye is appealing the ruling.

Bayraktar explained that Türkiye's proposal included options, such as extending the pipeline to southern Iraq.

He added, "It is not necessary to fill the entire pipeline with Iraqi oil. To reach these quantities, the pipeline must reach the south."

He stated that the deadline for reaching a new agreement is July 2026.

The Turkish government has indicated that the Development Road Initiative is an opportunity to extend the pipeline southward. Baghdad has allocated initial funding for the project in 2023.

The initiative involves a highway and railway line extending from the Iraqi city of Basra on the Gulf coast to the Turkish border and later to Europe.

(Press coverage by Hussein Hayat Sefer - Prepared by Noha Zakaria for the Arabic Bulletin - Edited by Mahmoud Reda Murad)