Iraq's oil minister, Hayan Abdel-Ghani, said on Wednesday that oil exports through Turkey’s Ceyhan pipeline will resume later on Wednesday or Thursday after a two-year hiatus, Iraqi state news agency INA reported.

Abdel-Ghani said an agreement had been concluded with the Kurdistan Regional Government to resume the oil exports via the pipeline.

He said that "80,000 barrels per day will be exported via Turkey’s Ceyhan pipeline through SOMO," INA quoted him as saying, referring to Iraq's state-owned oil marketer.

There was no sign of an imminent restart to oil exports through the pipeline, four industry sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline has been offline since 2023, after an arbitration court ruled that Turkey should pay $1.5 billion in damages for unauthorised exports between 2014 and 2018. Turkey is appealing the ruling.

The pipeline was transporting around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iraqi oil, including 370,000 bpd of KRG crude.

Baghdad said that SOMO was the only party authorised to manage crude exports via the Turkish port.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba, Muayad Suadi and Alex Lawler, Editing by Louise Heavens, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Jane Merriman)