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New Attack on Oil Pipeline in Iraq

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saboteurs attacked two key southern oil pipelines for a second day Wednesday, cutting off all crude oil exports from the Gulf, officials said. In the north, gunmen ambushed and killed a top security official for the state-run Northern Oil company.

The attacks were just the latest directed at the struggling country's oil sector. Reviving petroleum exports is considered critical to restoring Iraq's economy after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyranny. Repeated attacks have slowed the process of returning Iraq to the forefront of global energy markets.

The latest pipeline attack in Basra occurred just after midnight, said Samir Jassim, a senior official of the state-run Southern Oil Company. He said it would take at least a week to repair the city's two pipelines before exports with normal levels could be resumed.

"Due to the damage inflicted on the two pipelines, the pumping of oil to the Basra oil terminal has completely stopped," Jassim said. "Exports have come to halt" through the southern export route.

Two other explosions Tuesday along pipelines in the Faw peninsula, near Basra. Iraqi officials blamed those attacks on Saddam Hussein loyalists and al-Qaida.

In the north, the security official, Ghazi Talabani, was killed as he traveled to work in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, said Gen. Anwar Amin of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

Three gunmen shot at Talabani's car after his bodyguard briefly left the vehicle in a crowded market. His bodyguard was also wounded.

The security chief was a Kurd and the cousin of Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Talabani is the third official to be killed in Iraq in recent days. Gunmen killed an Education Ministry official Sunday, and a deputy foreign minister was slain as he went to work the day before.

Kirkuk sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves. The biggest northern oil field contains an estimated 7 billion barrels of recoverable crude, putting it in the same league as Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, during its heyday in the 1970s.

The city is also considered a difficult case in the political tangle of the new Iraq. Its inhabitants are made up of Kurds, Turkomen, Arabs and Christians. Rivalry among the three Muslim ethnic groups has led to bloodshed in recent months.

Saboteurs also blasted a northern oil pipeline about midnight Tuesday in the oil fields near the town of Dibis, some 20 miles west of Kirkuk, said Mustafa Awad, an official in the Northern Oil Company.

The Dibis attack did not disrupt exports and the fire was extinguished, Iraqi oil officials said Wednesday.

"This is an act of sabotage. We expect an increase in such attacks because most of the pipelines are running through uninhabited desert areas," Awad said. "The aim of such actions is to hinder Iraq's development and to harm its economy."

Those fields contain oil pipelines that carry crude oil to the Tarkiz station near the city.

Iraq's southern pipeline has been its main export artery ever since the U.S.-led invasion. Repeated sabotage attacks have forced the Iraqis to curtail shipments from oil fields in the north of the country, and most of Iraq's crude exports now come from southern fields.

On May 25, insurgents blew up part of a twin pipeline linking Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The explosion cut exports through the line, which transports about 400,000 barrels per day.

The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline has been attacked repeatedly since the fall of Saddam last year.

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