🇮🇶🤝🇸🇾 Thousands of Trucks Haul Iraq’s Oil Through Syria in Sign of Hormuz Legacy

Iraq is using a vast fleet of trucks to carry fuel oil through Syria and reroute flows away from the Strait of Hormuz, rapidly transforming its neighbor into the Middle East’s top export hub.

In just months, Syria has gone from shipping none of the fuel to making up more than a quarter of Middle Eastern volumes. The supplies are arriving on thousands of trucks that can take about four days to reach Syria’s Mediterranean ports, and highlight how the Iran war is reshaping the region’s energy flows.

Persian Gulf countries have been looking at how to reduce their reliance on Hormuz for exports, including through existing or new pipelines and expanding infrastructure at ports that sit outside the waterway. A fresh flare up in hostilities in the region is affecting the movement of fuel cargoes, further underlining the importance of alternative routes. The strait normally accounts for about a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

The sharp increase also underscores efforts to bring Syria into the global economy, after the US lifted years of sanctions and supported the country’s turnaround. The nation is increasingly seen as a gateway for energy flows from Iraq, including plans for crude oil pipelines, so as to weaken Iran’s leverage over the crucial waterway.

Fuel oil, used in shipping and power generation, is the main refined fuel that Iraq exports. But with tensions in the Persian Gulf and limited ability to work around Hormuz, the country is having to find other routes to prevent refineries from running out of storage space and being forced to shutter. That in turn would affect supply of other fuels such as gasoline and diesel.

The country is also looking to shore up its oil revenue after the closure of Hormuz hit its finances hard. Besides Syria, it’s also sending fuel-oil-laden trucks through Jordan, and traders say that small volumes of crude oil — the cornerstone of the economy — are being trucked in the same way.

A huge number of trucks are needed to match what a ship handles. Each truck carries around 20 tons, or 135 barrels, on the four- to six-day drive to the ports in Syria and Jordan. In comparison, about 300,000 barrels could be loaded onto a vessel that shuttles cargoes out to a bigger tanker offshore holding around 700,000 barrels.

Traders involved in the market estimate the Syrian trucked flows exceeded 600,000 tons of fuel oil last month, with the Mediterranean port of Baniyas receiving thousands of these vehicles. Lytton SA, a Geneva-based trading house with links to Iraq, has handled the majority of the trucking, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified as the details are private.

Meanwhile, around 100,000 tons of fuel oil a month are being trucked via Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, with some volumes marketed by Iraq’s Rania Group, the people said.

Iraq’s oil ministry points to even bigger flows, estimating that 1 million tons of fuel oil exports were trucked to Syria and Jordan in June, up from about 500,000 tons in May.

📝 TankerTrackers: Our own tracking shows that Iraq has exported 12 million barrels via Baniyas, Syria. That's 7 million barrels of crude oil and 5 million barrels of fuel oil. This has been going on since late April 2026.

🔗 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-18/thousands-of-trucks-haul-iraq-s-oil-through-syria-in-sign-of-hormuz-legacy