Iraq's Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline throughput has stabilised near 190kbd, well short of the 770kbd that the cabinet framed the line as ramping toward . 1 The pipeline carries northern Iraqi crude to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, and it was billed as the primary non-Hormuz backstop, a route that keeps Med refiners supplied without depending on the contested Gulf chokepoint. Iraqi officials are now discussing a push to a 500-650kbd range, but the most recent data has northern exports flat near 190kbd rather than climbing.
Total Iraqi output sits near 1.4mbd against 4.2mbd before the conflict, with southern seaborne routes down roughly 97%. The medium-sour grades that Med refiners were promised as Hormuz insurance are not arriving on the schedule the cabinet set, which leaves the relief that traders had penned in for the basin notional rather than physical.
That shortfall feeds straight into freight. Higher Ceyhan liftings would generate more cargoes on the TD19 route, the Mediterranean Aframax benchmark, and the scramble for non-Hormuz medium sour had already driven that rate to WS228 on 6 June . A ramp stuck at 190kbd leaves the Med supply-short and the freight bid intact, reinforcing the same prompt tightness that the backwardated curve is pricing in crude. No fresh TD19 print landed in the 9 to 11 June window to confirm a move off WS228, so the freight squeeze is unconfirmed but unrelieved.
