The United States is supporting efforts by Iraq and Syria to revive a crude pipeline between the two countries, a State Department official said on Tuesday. The same pipeline was mostly out of service after it sustained damage during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Now Washington wants American companies in the mix again. Different decade, same machinery.
Oil, War, and the Same Old Corridor
The revitalized Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline would run from Iraqi oilfields near Kirkuk to Syria's western coast. The project is one of several efforts by oil producers in the Middle East to lessen dependence on the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil and gas flowed before the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28. The route is being sold as infrastructure, but the facts on the ground are simpler: states and companies are trying to keep energy moving through zones shaped by invasion, blockade, and military pressure.
The United States has re-imposed a blockade of the chokepoint between Iran and Oman after strikes on ships in the strait that Washington blamed on Iran. The pipeline could reduce Iran's ability to block oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz. That is the logic of the state system in plain sight. One power tightens a blockade, another looks for a bypass, and ordinary people are left to live with the consequences of decisions made by governments, militaries, and oil firms.
Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday that Chevron could play a role in rebuilding the pipeline. Chevron said in response to a Reuters request for comment: “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on third-party statements or matters of a commercial nature.” The company didn't confirm anything. It didn't need to. Its name was already in the story, right where the money usually is.
The Corridor Game
On July 8, two sources told The Jerusalem Post that Saudi Arabia was considering an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor route through Syria, bypassing Israel in the process. The IMEC was announced by former US president Joe Biden in September 2023 and is described as a transformative infrastructure and trade project to link India with Europe through the Persian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. The language is grand. The pattern is familiar. States announce corridors, blocs, and routes while the region absorbs the costs of war, blockade, and competition over transit.
The pipeline story sits inside that larger scramble. Iraq and Syria are presented as partners in revival, the United States as a supporter, Chevron as a possible contractor, and Saudi Arabia as a state weighing another route through Syria. Each actor speaks the language of development or security. Each one is also moving through a system built on force. The pipeline was damaged in 2003 during the US-led invasion of Iraq, and now the same power structure is helping shape its return.
The result is a map drawn by states and corporations, not by the people who live along it. The route from Kirkuk to Syria's western coast may be sold as a practical fix for energy dependence. It also shows how quickly the machinery of war and the machinery of commerce become the same machine when governments decide the flow of oil matters more than the lives caught under it.
Amichai Stein contributed to the report.