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| Iraq |
| Leak Halts Iraqi Oil Flow to Turkey |
| 2003-10-18 |
| "Dammit, Murat, I said COUNTER-clockwise!" ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Iraq resumed pumping oil through its northern pipeline to Turkey on Saturday but stopped the flow after about two hours because of technical problems. The brief pumping - the first flow through the pipeline in two months - illustrates the uphill battle Iraq faces in restoring its oil industry, essential for reconstruction in the war-battered nation. Gurhan Unal, a top official at Turkey’s Ceyhan port, said a leak in the pipeline from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk stopped the flow before the oil reached Ceyhan, the Anatolia news agency reported. While sabotage has stopped the flow of oil through the 600-mile pipeline in the past, Iraq said technical problems - not sabotage - caused the disruption at around 11 a.m., a Turkish energy ministry official said. Repairs were under way, the Anatolia news agency quoted Unal as saying. A Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the flow could resume as early as Sunday. Getting the northern pipeline running is crucial to Iraq’s economic recovery; it carries crude from the vast northern fields that provide nearly half of Iraq’s exports to world markets. Though postwar oil sales resumed in June, the supply comes all from the south, amounting to 1 million barrels of oil a day compared to the 2.1 million Iraq pumped before the U.S.-led L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, has said the country loses $7 million a day when the northern pipeline is not in service. Earlier this week, an explosion ripped open part of the main pipeline linking the northern oil fields to the al-Doura oil refinery and the Mussayab power plant. That oil was earmarked for domestic use. I think we need some good ol’ Texas riggers out there kicking butts and making things work. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 I suspect we've got the riggers. Finding enough trustworthy folks to guard 600 miles of pipeline may be a bigger problem. |
| Posted by: PBMcL 2003-10-18 5:04:04 PM |
| #1 Leak Halts Iraqi Oil Flow to Turkey Hmmm. Why aren't there calls for a Justic Department investigation? It has to be a coverup! Its', it's...............woops, wrong kind of "leak". ;) |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-10-18 2:26:38 PM |