Iraq trucks Basra crude into the northern pipeline as Hormuz disruption rewrites the Erbil–Baghdad balance
Exports through Kirkuk–Ceyhan have reportedly reached 500,000 barrels a day, roughly 200,000 of them Basra crude arriving by tanker truck — a logistics workaround that quietly makes federal SOMO the marketer of Kurdistan Region barrels.
Kurdistan24 reported on 2 November, citing an unnamed North Oil Company source speaking to its Kirkuk correspondent Soran Kamaran, that flows to Ceyhan have reached 500,000 barrels per day, with SOMO shipping a blend of Kirkuk, Kurdistan Region and Basra crude. K24 states plainly that no official has confirmed the figure; OilPrice carried the same number the same day, and Shafaq News reported the increase. Roughly 200,000 bpd of the total is Basra crude moved north by tanker truck through collection stations at Sarallu and Khurmala before entering the northern system, per a Jerusalem Post write-up of 4 November citing the OilPrice report. The trajectory is the confirmed part: 250,000 bpd announced in March, around 120,000 bpd in late August, after the line resumed in September 2025 following a halt of some two and a half years and a one-year Iraq–Türkiye protocol signed in August.
The same JPost write-up puts southern production down roughly 70 percent in the early weeks of the war, from about 4.3 million bpd to 1.3 million — the most striking number in the file and the one whose original source this desk has not traced. Meanwhile Oil Minister Basim Mohammed Khudair al-Abadi confirmed on 3 November, via a Ministry of Oil statement carried by state agency INA, that terms have been agreed with Chevron for West Qurna-2, previously operated by Russia’s Lukoil, with signature targeted before year-end. The minister said he met Chevron vice president Joe Cook in Baghdad that Tuesday; talks continue on Nasiriyah and four exploration blocks. Chevron’s own Form 8-K records heads of agreement covering West Qurna 2, Nasiriyah and an export pipeline. Terms agreed is not a signed contract.
Assessment: This is a Kurdistan–Baghdad story wearing a logistics costume. Erbil once controlled the northern line unilaterally; federal SOMO now markets Region barrels through it, and southern crude is being pushed through northern infrastructure that Baghdad, not Erbil, directs. Whatever the war does to the 500,000 figure, that arrangement will be hard to unwind, and it arrives precisely as the November budget-transfer and salary argument with Erbil comes due. Two cautions. The headline number is one unnamed company source, flagged as unconfirmed by the outlet that published it — treat the direction, not the decimal. And Chevron’s heads of agreement, which includes an export pipeline, is a bet placed on Iraqi barrels finding a route that does not pass Hormuz.