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| Iraq |
| Oil flows resume from Iraq’s Kirkuk fields after Kurdish forces storm facility |
| 2017-03-03 |
| [Iraq News] Crude flows from Iraq’s northern Kirkuk fields resumed on Thursday after being halted for several hours when Kurdish forces stormed a facility in protest at the Iraqi government’s oil policy, several sources with knowledge of the matter said. Kurdish forces stormed the facility early on Thursday, saying they were searching for explosives planted by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... murderous Moslems whom Iraqi forces are fighting with the backing of a U.S.-led coalition. But a Kurdish official later said the facility had been seized to put pressure on Baghdad to build an oil refinery in Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... and that Kurdish forces would shut down oil flows again unless their demands were met within a week. "What we did today was a warning bell to the government," said Kurdish official Aso Mamand. "It’s not fair for Kirkuk’s oil to be sent to other provinces whilst Kirkuk is suffering a crisis." Oil officials and security sources in Kirkuk said the Kurdish forces had not withdrawn from the facility, but had allowed pumping to resume via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Kurdish peshmerga forces took full control of Kirkuk city and the surrounding area in 2014 when Islamic State murderous Moslems overran around one third of Iraq and the army’s northern divisions disintegrated. But Iraq’s state-run North Oil Company (NOC) now operate the oil fields in the region, which were pumping around 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) into the pipeline before the shutdown, the NOC executive said. The forces that seized the facility, located around 15 km (10 miles) west of Kirkuk, are loyal to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, which is dominant in the area. |
| Posted by:Fred |