Chevron is exploring a deal with the Iraqi government to transport crude oil out of the country without having to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Any alternative shipping route will involve new oil pipelines — potentially from Iraq, through Syria, and to the Mediterranean.Right now the details of this deal are vague. It’s a pre-deal-deal of sorts; a commitment to exploring an actual deal.“The vagueness kind of answers it all really. The vagueness gives you an indication of the complexity,” said Alan Gelder, senior vice president of refining, chemicals and oil markets at Wood Mackenzie. A deal would involve multiple governments operating in a politically unstable region — and deciding who’s going to pick up the tab. “There’s interest in doing this. But these things are just not quick,” Gelder said.Contstruction itself, though, could be relatively quick.“A pipeline is, you know, not a particularly complicated thing to install,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Plus, one already runs through Syria — though it needs repairs. It’s been offline since 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Daigle said if all goes well, the pipeline could be running in a handful of years. But it won’t totally solve the oil logistics problem. Twenty million barrels pass through the Strait of Hormuz each day when it’s fully open. Daigle said this pipeline might carry 2 million.“Which is not nothing, but it would take a lot more of these pipelines to make up for the disruption that we’ve seen,” he said.Daigle said the big takeaway here, even if this project doesn’t happen, is what it signals about where oil companies and producers think the war is heading. “The market is starting to see that this might be a prolonged conflict that might have more or less permanent changes in how oil flows out of that part of the world,” he said.Chevron seems to think the threat is high enough to consider making a multi-billion dollar bet.