Ankara and Baghdad are adding a new front to their energy partnership, moving beyond pipeline transit and toward upstream production after Türkiye's state-run company took a stake in a major consortium developing oil fields in Iraq's Kirkuk region.
The agreement, announced on Tuesday, will see the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) acquiring a 15% share in BP Energy Company of Kirkuk Limited (BPECKL), a consortium including BP and ConocoPhillips, to develop several of Iraq's largest oil fields.
The deal was signed ahead of a meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who was in Ankara for talks on security, trade, energy, transportation and water management, as well as joint infrastructure projects between the two neighbors.
The consortium will work to increase production at the Baba and Avanah domes, as well as the Bai Hassan, Jambur and Khabbaz fields in Kirkuk.
The fields currently produce around 300,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd), according to the latest publicly available field-level production data from Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
