A founding member of the Opec oil cartel, Iraq is hugely dependent on its oil exports, accounting for some 90% of its budget revenues.

Until Iranian attacks and threats all but shut the Strait of Hormuz in revenge for US-Israeli strikes, Iraq exported the majority of its oil through the strategic waterway.

Like other oil exporters in the oil-rich region, Iraq has been left scrambling for alternative routes, and in a statement late Wednesday, the oil ministry said it “has begun exporting oil by tanker truck through neighbouring Syria”.

Syria, it said, would “ensure the safe passage” of the oil and added exports will “gradually” increase.

The statement gave no further details.

A source in the Iraqi oil sector told AFP that out of a projected 299 trucks, “178 tankers loaded with fuel oil” had arrived at the Baniyas port refinery on the Mediterranean Sea as part of the “initial phase for exports”.

“This shipment, the first of its kind, entered through the Al-Tanf border crossing from neighbouring Iraq,” Safwan Sheikh Ahmad, spokesperson at the state Syrian Petroleum Company, told the AFP.

He said the oil trucks would be unloaded at the Baniyas terminal and transferred to tankers for further export.

“The initial shipment, consisting of 299 tankers, will enter Syria in batches, with the second batch expected soon,” he said.

Last month, Iraq announced it had resumed limited oil exports of 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) through the Turkish port of Ceyhan.