Monday, December 21, 2009

Sabotage cuts Iraqi oil pipeline


Al-Jazeera

"Oil exports from northern Iraq have stopped following an attack on a pipeline that leads to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Assem Jihad, an Iraqi oil ministry spokesman, told journalists on Sunday that a 55km section of the pipeline was damaged, causing a large oil spillage, around 325km north of Baghdad.

"Exports have stopped and technicians from the Northern Oil Company have gone to the site to survey the damage", Jihad said.

"We are asking the multinational forces to carry out more patrols to protect the pipeline, which was sabotaged for the fourth time in six weeks. We will not know when exports will resume until we have surveyed the damage."

The pipeline usually transports between 420,000 and 450,000 barrels per day (bpd), though it has the potential to ship 600,000 b.....


After an 18 month period of calm, oil pipelines became targets again on October 26 and there have been a number of attacks since......"

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