• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Iraqi exports on road to recovery Pipeline repairs see flows in the south climb to about 1.5m bpd

 03 December 2004 00:11 GMT

Crude oil exports from Iraq's key southern Basra terminal have recovered to 1.5 million barrels per day after repairs to a damaged pipeline that followed an explosion.
Exports plunged to around 1 million bpd last week after the explosion, whose cause still remains unclear.

Bad weather had also hampered loadings at the Basra terminal. Iraq exports from the south had been running at around 1.8 million bpd before the blast and the onset of stormy conditions.

In the north, crude deliveries from the Kirkuk fields to Turkey were expected to run at a reduced level of about 200,000 bpd for the next several months.

Firefighters are sill battling fires at six northern wells. Iraq had been pumping around 300,000 bpd from its northern fields before saboteurs torched the wells.

The pipeline to Turkey has come under repeated attacks because of difficulties in guarding it in an area largely under the control of Sunni Muslim rebels. By comparision, the southern Shia-dominated region has largely escaped sabotage and rebel activity in recent weeks.

However, insurgents and smugglers have kept up their attacks on the oil industry. An explosion caused a fire and briefly disrupted the flow of oil from wells in the southern Rumaila field earlier in the week. Oil Ministry officials said the blast was caused by smugglers piercing the pipeline, 35 kilometres east of Basra. The ensuing fire was quickly extinguished while an emergency pipeline was pressed into service to maintain export flows to Basra.

Saboteurs kept targeting oil facilities, blowing up a pipeline feeding a power station south of Baghdad.

Meanwhile amid continuing violence, Iraqi officials appealed to neighbouring countries at a security conference in Tehran to do more to stop the cross-border activities of rebels whose attacks have cast doubt on whether 30 January elections can be held on time.

Iraq's interim government has pledged to hold the elections as scheduled despite daily deadly attacks on Iraqi security forces and US-led coalition troops.

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