Seven months after Iranian gas went to zero, Iraq still has not published what it is importing
The Iraqi grid lost more than 3.1 GW when supplies stopped after the strike on South Pars. The resumption announced in March was described only as ‘limited', and no volume has followed.
Enerdata reported on or about 21 March 2026 that Iraqi grid capacity fell by more than 3.1 GW after Iranian gas supplies to Iraq dropped to zero. The National reported on 18 March that the halt followed the strike on the South Pars field. Three days later, Al Arabiya English carried an Iraqi ministry statement that limited Iranian gas imports had resumed. The word ‘limited' was not quantified then and, in everything The Files was able to retrieve, has not been quantified since. A Shafaq News analysis in May framed the year as one in which the war on Iran collapsed the grid’s last defences ahead of peak summer. Iraq is now entering the winter half of the load cycle with no published import volume, no current ministry output figure and no public load-shedding schedule.
The oil side moved in the opposite direction and with better documentation. Bloomberg reported on 3 March that Iraq halted crude shipments through the pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan; a deal between Baghdad and Erbil to resume exports was reported on 18 March. Kurdistan24, which is aligned with the KDP, subsequently reported that Basra crude was set to be exported through the Kurdistan Region’s pipeline to Ceyhan. If that holds, it inverts the structure of a decade-long dispute: the federal government becomes a user of the Erbil route rather than its adversary. A throughput figure of 120,000 barrels per day has circulated, but only through dinar-speculation newsletters, and The Files will not publish it until it comes from SOMO, the KRG or a wire.
Assessment: The absence of a number is the story. Electricity supply is the most politically load-bearing statistic in Iraq, and a government that has not filled its cabinet has an obvious interest in not publishing one. Expect the gap to be filled by whoever has a use for it. Watch also the framing split from January, when US forces left Ain al-Asad: the Iraqi defence ministry and Iranian-exile media called it withdrawal, US outlets called it consolidation and credited progress against Islamic State. Same event, two political products — and the second is Washington’s threat assessment, not an audited one. Mid-October is also when the Erbil salary transfer either lands or does not.