A Crude Marriage: Iraq Turkey and the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline

Abstract

Since the discovery of oil at Kirkuk in northern Iraq oil has shaped relations between Iraq and Turkey as the former needed markets and export routes to the Mediterranean and the latter reliable sources of supply. This article examines the origins of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline from northern Iraq to the Turkish Mediterranean coast charting the period of Iraqi-Turkish economic rapprochement in the 1960s to the construction of the pipeline in the 1970s. It also seeks to add to our collective understanding of why transnational oil pipelines in the Middle East succeed or fail by examining the pipeline's operational record.