Posted on 01/25/2004 10:03:59 AM PST by RJCogburn
Iraq is unlikely to resume crude exports along it's vital northern oil pipeline to Turkey until late summer due to sabotage that has battered the country's economy, oil industry officials said Sunday.
Iraqi officials had hoped security along the pipeline would improve enough to allow shipments from the giant Kirkuk oilfields to restart this spring. But sabotage has not abated. The pipeline opened for a few days last year but was closed by another sabotage attack.
"We expect to have the pipeline running by late summer," one official told Reuters.
"The attacks are steady and security is still a problem. It's very hard to tell when it will be ready because every time we finish a repair, we fear there will be another attack."
Since the war ended in April, Iraq has been restricted to crude exports from its southern oilfields as saboteurs repeatedly sent segments of the northern field up in flames by simply planting crude bombs underneath it.
The latest assessment of security along pipelines from the northern fields is another blow to Iraq's economic recovery after years of wars, United Nations sanctions and the insurgency gripping the country.
Iraq's 2004 budget assumes the country, which sits on the world's second largest reserves, will earn $13 billion from crude exports of 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd).
To secure those revenues in the absence of exports from the north, the country will have to keep exporting current levels of 1.6 million bpd of Basra Light from its Basra Oil Terminal in the Gulf.
Kirkuk has the capacity to add some 800,000 bpd on top of that. Iraq is aiming to export 1.7 million bpd of Basra Light from the Gulf during February.
Another official said there had been 40 attacks on the pipeline in the last three to four months, close to previous levels of sabotage that has hit the oil industry since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in April.
Restarting the pipeline was a top priority and U.S. troops had secured the help of tribesmen and local people along the route, he said.
"They are starting to realize that it is in their interest to help stop the saboteurs who are just hurting Iraq," said an official.
But officials said efforts to revive the northern exports were caught in a vicious circle.
"The people repairing the pipeline are hesitant because they worry it will get attacked again as soon as it is fixed," said an industry official.
News like this as well as more brave Americans killed tells me things are not going very well, and I don't think we can just blame the media for focusing on bad news.
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