Washington Institute for Near East Policy (5 December 2025)

Noam RAYDAN and James JEFFREY

In addition to providing discounted crude of a quality desired by American refiners, the resumption of oil flows via the ITP is already showing promise of furthering U.S. policy toward partners and adversaries alike.

On November 24—two months after the reopening of the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP)—an oil tanker laden with crude from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and sailing from the Turkish port of Ceyhan discharged at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port terminal. Although U.S. oil imports are generally driven by private trade and pricing dynamics, this particular shipment would not have been possible without a U.S.-facilitated interim deal in September under which Baghdad, KRI officials in Erbil, and international oil companies (IOCs) operating in northern Iraq agreed to reopen the ITP after a halt of more than two years.

Washington has played an influential role in Iraq’s energy landscape for decades—it ensured that the country’s 2005 constitution recognized Kurdish co-management rights for “new oil”; it threaded the needle between encouraging American IOC engagement in southern Iraq and supporting American firms in the north; it brokered several earlier Baghdad-Erbil deals on sharing oil earnings; and it encouraged Turkey, Iraq, and the KRI to compromise on the latest ITP breakthrough. U.S. officials should maintain this close engagement today given its importance for the stability of Iraq (a major oil producer and exporter to global markets) and for U.S. companies looking to expand their projects in the north or return to developing upstream assets in the south (e.g., as seen in a recent deal with Exxon Mobil). Equally important, American sponsorship of Baghdad’s primary economic asset can help counter Iranian influence by showing Iraqis that there are concrete benefits to cooperation with the United States.

To read the rest of the article, please click: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/oil-northern-iraq-arrives-united-states-after-pipeline-reopens