Iraq’s plans to export oil via a pipeline through Syria to avert future disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz will likely require four years of construction and cost at least $15 billion, sources with knowledge of the project told Reuters.

US officials and energy executives are billing the plan, which is receiving initial support for feasibility studies from a consortium including Chevron, as part of a strategy to reduce the industry’s reliance on a waterway that has been largely shut by the Iran war.

“Over the next two years, the strait is going to become irrelevant. It is going to become just another body of water,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week.

While a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas was shipped through Hormuz before the conflict, Bessent said “more than 50pc or 70pc” of those exports would instead be exported via underground pipelines.

But two sources directly involved in the project told Reuters the plans for the Iraq-Syria pipeline would take twice that long due to the need for new infrastructure and could face other hurdles.