Iraq and Syria signed a cooperation agreement on July 17 to rehabilitate and reconstruct the Kirkuk-Baniyas crude oil pipeline, a Mediterranean export route that has sat dormant for decades. The signing took place in Washington on the sidelines of a US-Iraq business summit, during Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s visit to the United States, which also included a stop in Houston for meetings with major energy firms.

Basra Oil Company CEO Bassam Abdul Karim Nasr signed on behalf of Iraq, and Syrian Petroleum Company CEO Yousef Kabali signed for Syria. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended the ceremony, and the State Department framed the pipeline as a strategic infrastructure project to be executed by a US-led international consortium.

When the United Arab Emirates announced its departure from OPEC, most commentary focused on the diplomatic rupture — the end of a decades-long alliance, the tension with Riyadh, the signal it sent about the cohesion of the Gulf producer bloc. But the more consequential story is infrastructural. The UAE already has a pipeline that changes everything.

The Habshan-Fujairah Pipeline: Built for Exactly This Moment

The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline — running 400 kilometers from the onshore Habshan oil fields to the deepwater export terminal at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman — was completed in 2012 and was always understood as a strategic hedge against Hormuz closure. It has a nameplate capacity of approximately 1.5 million barrels per day, with expansion potential that Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has publicly targeted at 1.8 to 2 million barrels per day.