Iraq is ramping the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline from 220kbd (thousand barrels per day) toward a 770kbd target over roughly two and a half months1. The line carries crude from the Kirkuk fields to Ceyhan, Turkey's Mediterranean export terminal, delivering oil to European refiners without touching The Gulf. The push comes as Iraq's southern output fell 70% to 1.3mbd and its seaborne exports dropped 97% in May, so the northern pipeline is replacing collapsed southern volume.
Oil funds about 90% of Iraqi state revenue, which makes the ramp a fiscal necessity rather than an opportunistic grab for market share. With the south choked, Baghdad has to push crude through the only export artery still open to it.
Kirkuk's medium sour barrels map directly onto the feedstock Mediterranean refiners lost when Russian Urals and Iraqi Basra supply tightened, so the addition matters by grade as much as by volume. That substitution, rather than the headline barrel count, is why a full ramp to 770kbd would rank as the largest European-accessible crude addition of the conflict so far. Where early-May freight priced a Hormuz-wide closure with the VLCC TD3C route near WS458, Ceyhan reframes the question from how to avoid The Gulf to whether the Mediterranean can be loaded fast enough to refill it.
