KARBALA, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents blasted an oil pipeline, setting off a huge blaze and slashing Iraq's daily oil exports by about 25 percent. Firefighters were still battling a blaze that erupted Saturday after insurgents bombed a pipeline carrying oil for export to a terminal south of the southern city of Basra.
Jabber Luyaibi, director general of Iraq's Southern Oil Company, said engineers managed to divert oil to a second pipeline. But an official for the State Oil Marketing Pipeline told Dow Jones Newswires that the alternative pipeline was too small to handle the additional flow and that, as a result, Iraq's petroleum exports fell by 25 percent to 1.2 million barrels a day.
In London, Paul Horsnell, head of energy research at Barclays Capital, said the damage could be repaired quickly and that the disruption of exports would be temporary. But he said the attack was disturbing because "quite clearly, now the southern infrastructure is a target." |