Iraqi Oil Terminal Closed After Attack

Yahoo! News ^ | April, 25, 2004 | LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Wr

[OneLoyalAmerican]

BAGHDAD - Suicide boat bombings targeting the key oil industry have forced the closure of Iraq's biggest terminal, losing the country nearly 1 million barrels a day in exports, the oil minister said Sunday.

U.S. military officials were trying to determine the launching point of the unprecedented suicide boat attack on two offshore oil terminals that are the sole outlet of Iraqi crude from the south. The attacks killed two U.S. Navy sailors.

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulloum told reporters that the Al-Basra Oil Terminal closed after Saturday evening's attacks and would open on Monday, at the earliest.

The Al-Basra terminal was one of two terminals targeted in the attacks. The other, smaller terminal, Khawr al-Amaya, reopened Sunday morning.

The Al-Basra terminal unloads up to 900,000 barrels a day of Iraq's total current exports of around 1.6 million barrels per day, he said. He would not say how much that production was worth.


Bahr al-Ulloum corrected an earlier report by the head of marketing for Iraqi oil that the Al-Basra terminal had reopened.

The boat bombings were the first maritime attack against Iraqi oil facilities in the Gulf — an apparently new tactic in the Iraq conflict that resembles al-Qaida attacks in 2000 and 2002 against the destroyer USS Cole and a French tanker off Yemen.

Three dhows, small boats often used in the Gulf, pulled near the Khawr al-Amaya and Al-Basra terminals — in Gulf waters off Iraq's port of Umm Qasr. The dhows exploded when approached by teams sent to intercept them. The dhow near Khawr al-Amaya flipped over a U.S. Navy interception craft, killing the sailors and wounding five others.

[BerkeleyRight]

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Two other dhows exploded about 50 yards from the Al-Basra terminal when interception teams fired on at least one of them, Bahr al-Ulloum said. The blast damaged generators at the terminal, he said.

"The export of oil from Khawr al-Amaya resumed this morning," Bahr al-Ulloum. "We hope it will resume from Al-Basra tomorrow."

Insurgents have often struck oil pipelines in Iraq, repeatedly cutting off exports from northern oil fields to Turkey.

About 160,000 barrels per day are currently being exported from the north. Another 700,000 barrels per day are shipped through Khawr al-Amaya, which opened two months ago. The rest goes through the Al-Basra terminal, Bahr al-Ulloum said.

Bahr al-Ulloum said he believed al-Qaida was behind the boat bombings. "This is my feeling, I don't have evidence of it," he told reporters.

The attacks against the USS Cole in 2000 and the French tanker in 2002 off Yemen, blamed on Osama bin Laden's terror network, killed 17 U.S. sailors and a tanker crewmember.

U.S. military officials in the Gulf were sending a team of investigators trying to determine the launching point of the attacks.

Asked whether the attackers arrived at the port by traveling from inside Iraq or from neighboring Iran or Kuwait, Navy Commander James Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said, "That's what were trying to determine."

Iraq's al-Basra port, formerly known as Mina al-Bakr, was repeatedly bombed during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, when the two countries' armies targeted each others' oil exports. Iraq renovated the port in 1992, but U.N. sanctions on the export of oil kept it closed until 1996.

[Just mythoughts]

This should make our lying crooked liberals very happy. They are green with envy that those of that UN "Oil for Food" scam have lost their economic base.

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Two other dhows exploded about 50 yards from the Al-Basra terminal when interception teams fired on at least one of them,

[BenLurkin]

bump

[OneLoyalAmerican]

Two other dhows exploded about 50 yards from the Al-Basra terminal when interception teams fired on at least one of them,

Yes you get 72 virgins, and there is a reason why they're virgins. They're dog ugly, and you MUST do all 72. Enjoy hell AlQiada swine.

[knarf]

"Three dhows, small boats often used in the Gulf, pulled near the Khawr al-Amaya and Al-Basra terminals "

Wouldn't a few strategically placed, full auto 50 cal. be sufficient to let them know that the oil terminals are off limits and will do business with whomever they please ... y'know, like ... Capitalists.

Sheesh!

Arm yourselves, 'Raqui's!

[OneLoyalAmerican]

50 caliber armor piercing incendiary rounds might give a jihadist a terminal case of lead poisoning.

[MizSterious]

Hah! I hope you're right! (Janet Reno lookalikes, perhaps?)

[tiamat]

They are armed.

they just don't know what to do with it.

Makes me mad, too. These people have stacked up weapons for YEARS... Never had the guts to take Saddam out themselves, despite the fact that the country is LOUSY with weapons and that he and his regime was hated.

Arabs need to learn personal responsability!