Iraq resumed exports of oil from its southern terminal on Tuesday, a day after a halt caused by insurgent attacks, an Iraqi oil official said. The resumption came sooner than expected, just a day after two officials at the South Oil Co. said the pipelines to the port of Basra were not likely to be operating for at least a week. "Exports resumed and the pumping is up to its normal level," South Oil's chief of public relations, Samir Jassim, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Exports through the southern ports of Khor al-Amaya and Basra reached their normal average of 1.8 million to 1.85 million barrels by mid-afternoon Tuesday, he said. On Sunday and Monday, insurgent attacks and the fires they started stopped the flow in all the pipelines from Iraq's southern oil fields. The southern ports account for 90 percent of Iraq's exports. Insurgents have been attacking oil pipelines in north and south Iraq for months. But the last time saboteurs brought southern exports to a halt was in June. The northern pipelines, which run to the southern Turkish port of Ceyhan, had no flow on Monday, according to an oil official in Ceyhan.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has condemned the pipeline attacks, saying they are making Iraqis suffer. "This is causing a great loss for the Iraqi people in terms of revenues, which could be used in the reconstruction of the country and to pay the people and get the economy back on track again," Allawi told CNN in an interview broadcast Monday. The governor of Basra, Hassan al-Rashid, said Iraq was losing US$70 million a day because of the attacks on pipelines and oil fields. "A number of saboteurs and terrorists who are spread across Iraq are behind these operations, and they are taking advantage of the lack of security in order to destroy the country's economy," he said. Officials have made a priority of securing the pipelines and oil infrastructure. But with about 4,350 miles of pipeline crisscrossing the country, they concede there are many places for saboteurs to strike. "Those pipelines are very long and very vulnerable," a U.S. diplomat in Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity. |