The tender will be awarded shortly, and the pipeline is due to open at the end of 2004, energy ministry secretary general Azmi Khreissat told the Al-Arab Al-Yawm daily. The pipeline will run from the Hidatha oil terminal 260km from Baghdad to the Jordan-Iraq border and thence to the Zarqa refinery, northeast of Amman, with an initial capacity of 100,000bpd, which could be expanded to 150,000bpd, and more than twice that in the future. 450km of the total 750-km route will be in Iraq, with 300km in Jordan. Jordan depends on Iraq for all its oil supplies and was due to import 5.5million tonnes by the end of 2002, half of free of charge and the rest at preferential rates. The crude is supplied under a special exemption from the UN trade embargo on Iraq.