Iraq needs to regain access to a pipeline that was used in the past to export Iraqi crude oil via Saudi Arabia, according to Parliament member and former Iraqi oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr Al Olum. “I have discussed this issue before with the Saudi side,” Saudi newspaper Al Hayat quoted Al Olum as saying, as carried by Reuters on Thursday. The Iraqi Pipeline in Saudi Arabia (IPSA) has not been used to load Iraqi oil since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait back in 1990. IPSA was laid across Saudi Arabia in the 1980s after both sides in the Iran-Iraq war attacked oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia confiscated the pipeline in 2001 in exchange for debts Iraq owed. In 2011, Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz—which lies along the route of around 40 percent of the global seaborne oil exports—in retaliation to the Western sanctions. […]