Kirkuk to Haifa

From Kirkuk a double line takes the oil across the bed of the Tigris and the Euphrates to Hadithe, a distance of 156 miles. Thence the line forks, one great steel tube stretching out through Syria and the Lebanon to its northern terminus at Tripoli and the other crossing the rocky volcanic stretches of the Transjordan to Palestine and its southern terminal at Haifa.

Some 1,000 miles of its way lies through barren desert where roads were unknown and water non-existent for the greater part of the year. In the high deserts of Syria the track rises to 3,000 feet or more above sea-level while in other places it sinks over 200 feet below the level of the sea. For a hundred miles in the Transjordan the hard volcanic rock had to be blasted and drilled before a trench could be made to bury the great steel tube.

-- from King Ghazi opens pipeline an article which originally appeared in the Guardian on 15 Jan 1935.