In early April, a convoy of 299 Iraqi fuel tankers crossed into Syria on its way to the Mediterranean port of Baniyas, one of the few remaining paths to international markets amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It was the first time Iraqi oil had crossed through Syria legally since 2003, when the U.S. invasion of Iraq effectively shuttered the cross-border flow of oil from Iraq to Syria. In late April, Iraq expanded the route, reopening its northern Rabia crossing with Syria, a crossing that had been closed for more than a decade during Syria’s civil war. Between April and late July, more than 2.1 million metric tons of Iraqi fuel moved to the Syrian coast.
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