‘Pipe dream’: Turkey’s plan to redraw Middle East energy routes after Iran

Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz has shunted energy markets onto a roller coaster since the US and Israel war began almost a month ago.

Several measures have already been deployed to address soaring oil and gas prices. Saudi Arabia has been using its East-West Pipeline to bypass the strait, pumping oil through the Red Sea. Iraq has been exploring the possibility of exporting oil overland.

Turkey, a regional crossroads for several international oil and gas pipelines, sees the crisis as an opportunity and has been offering an alternative: building more pipelines.

Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar last week proposed several new projects during a live interview with Anadolu Agency.

Bayraktar has long advocated connecting Basra, Iraq’s oil-rich southern region, to the north, where the Iraq-Turkey pipeline carries oil from Kirkuk to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The pipeline, which has long been underutilized, has a capacity of more than 1.5 million barrels per day.

Bayraktar did not stop there. He also revived the idea of building a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey, crossing several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria.

QatarEnergy declared force majeure on some of its long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply contracts last month, including for customers in Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China, after Iran targeted its facilities.

“So, you have no LNG exports. You already cannot move through Hormuz. Now imagine that a certain amount of gas is being sent to Turkey and Europe through a pipeline,” Bayraktar said. “We are opening an alternative export route for you.”

Crossing the Caspian Sea

Turkey’s energy minister is also eager to advance another long-discussed project: the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which would take gas from Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and on to Europe.

Turkmenistan is a major gas exporter, with annual export capacity of 80bn cubic metres. Turkey already imports some Turkmen gas through Iran using swap arrangements.

“But the proper solution, one of the most ideal solutions, would be for that gas to cross the Caspian and come to Turkey via Azerbaijan and Georgia,” Bayraktar said.

Another option Ankara is considering is connecting Syrian oil fields to the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline.

In electricity, the minister has another proposal: building a power interconnector between Saudi Arabia and Turkey via Jordan and Syria.

Middle East Eye reported in February that Saudi Arabia envisions an electrical cable project with Greece bypassing Israel in favour of Syria. This project would link the Gulf state and Europe via a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) interconnection.

Turkish officials say they are ready to help build all of these projects. “But unfortunately, what we have been saying has not found a response up to now,” Bayraktar said. “Hopefully, this crisis will lead everyone into a process where they pause, think more seriously, and we can implement these projects.”

Energy experts paint a mixed picture. While some projects, such as the Trans-Caspian pipeline and linking Syrian oil fields to the Turkish pipeline network, are seen as relatively feasible, others, such as the proposed Qatari gas pipeline, appear far harder to complete.

Umud Shokri, a senior visiting fellow at George Mason University specialising in energy, said that while the Trans-Caspian pipeline linking Turkmen gas to Azerbaijan is now politically more likely than in the past, it is still constrained by unresolved regional issues.

“The project would require a roughly 300km subsea pipeline across the Caspian Sea from Turkmenbashi to Baku, where it could connect to existing export infrastructure, including the South Caucasus Pipeline and the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline,” he said.

“The economic case is far less straightforward. Even conservative estimates place the subsea segment at around $2bn, while scaling volumes to a commercially meaningful level of 20–30 bcm per year would require additional upstream development, compression capacity, and downstream expansion.”

Shokri said the project also faces demand constraints, as European markets are increasingly supplied by LNG. Without long-term purchase agreements and clear price competitiveness, securing financing remains difficult.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have improved, but they still need to approve the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which sets the rules for subsea pipelines and reduces the scope for Russian and Iranian attempts to block the project.

The Qatar plan

The Qatar-Turkey pipeline, another long-pursued project, also faces major challenges.

Although Turkish and Qatari leaders publicly suggested as far back as 2009 that they had agreed to build a pipeline connecting Qatar’s North Field to Turkish infrastructure through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, the scheme reportedly faced opposition from former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, under Russian pressure.

With Assad’s downfall, Turkey would like to revive the idea. Qatar’s foreign ministry said in January 2025 that it was not considering it, suggesting that the LNG model remains a better option for Doha because it offers greater flexibility in sales.

“The project is technically feasible, but economically and politically fragile,” said Justin Dargin, a senior fellow at the Doha-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs. “Historically, the pipeline was estimated at around $10–12 bn, but in today’s environment, factoring in security, inflation, and political risk, you’re realistically looking at $15bn or more.”

Dargin told MEE a 1,500-km pipeline crossing multiple borders is not just an energy project but a geopolitical commitment carrying a very high-risk premium, because guaranteeing stable gas flows for decades would be a major challenge.

He said the current crisis affecting Hormuz is increasing the pipeline’s strategic appeal despite Qatar’s highly efficient LNG system, which gives it global flexibility and access to spot markets. A pipeline, by contrast, would tie volumes to a single corridor and reduce that flexibility.

“As seen with Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline and the UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, bypass capacity is something Gulf producers are increasingly focused on and will likely expand once the conflict subsides,” he said. “However, this would not be a clean bypass like those systems, which operate entirely within national borders.”

Dargin pointed out that the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline would be vulnerable to disruption from both state and non-state actors, including Iran-aligned groups and militant organisations targeting energy infrastructure.

“On the political side, Qatar has historically avoided transit dependency,” he said. “A multi-country pipeline would expose Qatar to exactly the kind of political leverage it has spent decades minimising.”

The project would require sustained alignment among Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey – an “exceptionally high bar” in the current environment, Dargin said.

Syria’s oil fields

An easier fix might be Turkey’s proposal to connect Syrian oil fields to the Iraq-Turkey pipeline, which has substantial unused capacity.

Current Syrian oil production is estimated at roughly 100,000 to 120,000 barrels per day. Before the 2011 civil war, Syria was producing nearly 400,000 bpd.

Wael Alzayat, executive director of the US-Syria Business Council, said both Syrian and Turkish officials could support the project, but there are still obstacles, including low Syrian output and unresolved questions over control of the oil fields.

“Some areas are still under the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the handover is not really complete there,” he said, adding that elements in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or Islamic State cells “could still pose a threat”.

Alzayat nevertheless believes the project is more feasible and realistic than a Qatar-Turkey pipeline crossing Syria.

He said a few billion dollars would be needed to develop Syria’s oil fields, and since Damascus is struggling to finance such projects, outside support would likely be necessary. After that, he told MEE, connecting the fields would be relatively straightforward.

Extending the Iraq-Turkey pipeline

The Turkish government has also repeatedly raised the possibility of extending the Iraq-Turkey pipeline from Kirkuk to Basra. But the absence of political consensus in Iraq has left the project unresolved.

Previous Iraqi governments backed what they called the Development Road project, which would connect the Basra region to Turkey through highways, railways, and pipelines.

Salam Jabbar Shahab, an Iraqi energy expert, said political willingness to connect Basra to the Iraq-Turkey pipeline has increased substantially since the Hormuz crisis. The Iraqi government needs monthly oil revenue of $6.3bn to cover its expenditure, including public sector salaries, Shahab said, adding that government losses in March alone were estimated at more than $5.5bn.

“The current situation requires Iraqi policymakers to secure daily oil exports of around 3.5 million barrels to maintain flexibility in paying the inflated monthly payroll,” he said. “Currently, the country exports only 200,000 barrels per day through Kirkuk-Ceyhan, an amount insufficient to cover salaries, social welfare, and other operational expenses.”

Shahab said the Basra pipeline could open a new outlet for southern Iraqi crude to European and Asian energy markets, bypassing the now-closed Strait of Hormuz.

“However, the main obstacle will be securing the necessary financial and security resources for the project’s execution and operation,” he said.

“Iraq currently lacks the funds required to finance this proposed pipeline and the associated facilities needed to pump crude oil. The project may require billions of dollars – potentially $6bn to $10bn – and may necessitate borrowing from international lenders.”

The pipeline would also face serious security risks, since it would run across multiple regions from south to north, leaving it vulnerable to threats from armed groups and potentially to political bargaining amid Iraq’s fragmentation, he said.

Still, he added, the current situation has given Iraqi decision-makers a pragmatic reason to move quickly on the project and push for implementation.