New Delhi, Aug. 2 -- ANKARA - Iraq's oil ministry arrived in Ankara with arithmetic that left little room for negotiation. Since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, Baghdad's crude export revenues had plummeted from roughly six billion dollars a month to less than two billion, a collapse so severe it threatened the government's ability to pay civil servants and fund basic services. On Friday, the two countries signed a one-year renewal of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline transit agreement, extending a lifeline that Iraqi officials described as an important strategic milestone, though the terms of a permanent arrangement remain unsettled.

The agreement was signed between Turkey's state pipeline operator BOTAS and Iraq's state oil firms SOMO and t...