Attackers sabotage Iraqi oil industry

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - An explosion ripped through a crude oil pipeline linking northern Iraqi fields on Tuesday, a North Oil company official said.

"It was probably sabotage," said the official, who asked not to be named.

Witnesses said fire was still raging in the pipeline running from Disi to a pumping station around the city of Kirkuk, 30 miles to the west.

Saboteurs blasted an oil pipeline feeding storage tanks at Basra in the Gulf, cutting exports by a third on Tuesday.

Iraqi leaders are fighting a wave of assassinations, bombings and sabotage by guerrillas who are trying to prove the new interim government cannot rule effectively after a June 30 handover of power.

Sabotage attacks on the main export pipeline from the northern Kirkuk fields to Turkey forced pumping to stop earlier this month. Saboteurs also blew up two oil wells in April.

Iraq has been relying on offshore Gulf terminals to export crude oil from the south. Oil revenue is the country's main independent source of foreign currency.

International oil prices surged a dollar a barrel following news of the attack in the south.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040615/ts_nm/energy_iraq_north_dc

LONDON : Oil prices rallied before pausing for breath in trading, as Iraq halted exports from Basra after saboteurs blew up a portion of a pipeline near the southern port city, analysts said.

The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for July delivery fell by four cents to 35.45 dollars per barrel in late afternoon trading in London.

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The contract had been trading at around 34.40 dollars on Tuesday before news of the sabotage was announced.

New York's benchmark contract, light sweet crude for delivery in July, lost five cents to 37.55 dollars per barrel in early deals.

"Prices rallied on the news of the sabotage, but then we saw a bit of profit-taking," Investec analyst Bruce Evers said.

Saboteurs used explosives to target a pipeline south of Basra on Tuesday, Iraqi oil minister Thamer Ghadban told AFP.

"It was certainly sabotage," he stressed.

Exports from the area's two terminals were shut following the attack, Basra's harbour master said.

The attack was at least the fourth attack on Iraq's oil pipelines in nine days. Around 1.65 million barrels per day of crude oil are exported from southern Iraq.

"OPEC wouldn't have enough oil to compensate" for such a loss, Evers said.

In earlier trading on Tuesday, prices fell amid withdrawals from the market by speculative funds and signs that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was increasing output above its official planned quotas, analysts said.

Funds moved to exit ahead of expiry of the July contracts, set for the close of trading in London on Tuesday, and in New York on Thursday.

Swiss consultancy firm Petrologistics meanwhile estimated that OPEC was producing 29.7 million barrels per day in June, an increase of 1.2 million bpd on May.

OPEC has pledged to raise its official output ceiling to 26 million bpd by August 1.

Prices also slipped at the start of trading on Tuesday as the market prepared for further increases in weekly US crude and gasoline stocks, when the government publishes its latest data on Wednesday.

"The market in the last couple of days had been worried about OPEC production rising and the growing realisation that the supply situation was now more comfortable, especially for gasoline," Evers said.

"Although stocks are still below their levels of a year ago, there is no sort of panic that we saw in March and April," he added.

Oil prices meanwhile remain adrift of record high points of more than 42 dollars, recently reached in New York trading.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/90164/1/.html

Three Cheers for Iraqi Civil Defense!

What a shame that the Arabic oil moguls of OPEC cannot grasp the simplest lesson from those defending their homes and lives from criminal aggression perpretrated by the current regimes installed in the UK and USA for their masters, the international corporate oligarch;

-- but then they do not represent the interests of their own people, they themselves are mere servants to oligarchian rule posing as the protectors of their culture, their religions, and their societies as such, or so it would seem.

They do not remember the deliberate lies and coercion that were used against their forebears in order to gain a modern day bridgehead in the Middle East. They do not remember the secret deals that are still extant today that were made by French , British, Russian & of course American political employees of the oligarch in order to steal the independence of Arabs that Arabs united, fought and died for...they only remember the promises of personal wealth and social status if they would only cooperate...or so it would seem.

As long as the peoples of Iraq have no sovereignty, no freedom from external oppression, are subjected to the, by UN definition, criminal aggression of the currently squatting regime of the USA & it´s desperately prostituted ally Britain, there isn´t going to be any "profit" made from Iraqi oil. It is that simple.

People fighting for their own legitimate societal and personal rights in accordance with established law have been subjected to inhuman deprivation for over a decade. Such peoples will happily die rather than submit to a cretin looking for a monetary gain at the expense of the lives and human rights of others.

Culturally, politically, economically illiterate individuals of little moral character (you know who you are) however, will fight only as long as there is a percieved personal profit to be made.

As for the American and European citizens that would rather be consumers than stand for the equal rights of all humanity in accordance with defined yet continuously defiled "laws" of the UN, you can thank yourselves for the fact that your spineless civic cowardice will bring with it a
c o l d e r winter as well as unnecessary economic hardship. Suit yourselves, by your actions are you known.