End of the line: part of Turkey's Ceyhan oil terminal
Kurdish rebels claim pipeline attack
Kurdish rebels have reportedly claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline which halted Iraq oil exports to Turkey.
Iraq's Oil Ministry spokesman told Reuters that Baghdad expected the pipeline to be reopened in a week and that loadings at Ceyhan would not be affected.
The Firat news agency, which is seen as being close to the Kurdish rebels, reported the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants as saying the sabotage attack caused extensive damage.
Oil exports were halted after the blast.
A Turkish Energy Ministry source told Reuters the fire was extinguished last night and oil should be flowing on the affected section of the link within a week.
The source also said oil was flowing on a line that runs parallel to the affected line.
Sources from the ministry and the pipeline company Botas had previously told Reuters the attack occurred around 8.30 pm local time (1830 GMT) on Friday near Midyat in Mardin province.
The blast damaged a 46-inch pipeline, the sources said. No details on the scale of damage were available.
"It will definitely take more than 48 hours to fix, but no longer than a week," the Iraqi spokesman said, adding that the estimation was based on previous experience with damaged pipelines in Iraq, and not from reports on the attack in Turkey.
Baghdad also expects loading of oil shipments at Ceyhan to be unaffected despite a halt in pumping from Iraq, spokesman Asim Jihad said.
"This will not affect exports because there is enough in storage. Exports are made from storage, so just because the pipeline is closed doesn't mean exports have stopped," he said.
The pipeline usually carries about 400,000 barrels of oil per day from Iraq to Turkey.
A shipping source said there were 4.3 million barrels in storage at Ceyhan on Friday. Two ships were due to arrive in the next week to load a total of 2 million barrels.
Separatist PKK rebels have claimed responsibility in the past for similar attacks on pipelines in eastern Turkey.
The PKK, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union as well as Turkey, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of carving out an ethnic homeland in mainly Kurdish south-east Turkey.
Military sources in the region told Reuters military personnel had established control in the affected area and that the blast appeared to have been caused by sabotage.