Iraq Oil Flows Unchanged After Basra HQ Attacked

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

BAGHDAD - Shi’ite militiamen struck at the center of Iraq’s oil industry Thursday, setting the South Oil Company headquarters in the southern port of Basra on fire and further undermining the central government authority, police and officials said.

The attack did not effect Iraq’s oil exports from Basra of one million barrels per day.

"They came in droves, surrounded the building and looted it before setting it on fire," said an official at the state company’s Basra headquarters, who declined to be identified.

Ahmad al-Maliki, an official in the Shi’ite militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the city of Basra, denied that his group had a role in the attack.

Five British armored vehicles hurried to the scene — Basra is in the British military zone — but it was too late as firefighters worked on putting out the flames that engulfed the eight story building.

Followers of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had threatened to attack oil installations in response to a U.S. offensive against Sadr and his fighters in Najaf, a center of Shi’ite Islam.

The Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq had already forced the Iraqi government to keep a main southern pipeline shut for the 10th day Thursday, halving the country’s oil exports to one million barrels per day (bpd).

Exports were still running at one million bpd after the attack on the south headquarters, the oil official said.

Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban earlier said exports will not be restored to full rates until rising violence in the southern part of the country has abated.

DEFIANT CLERIC

Sadr defied orders from Iraq’s interim prime minister on Thursday to end his uprising or face attack, as the U.S. military attacked an area near the shrine where he had taken refuge. The city, a center of Shi’ism, has been the focus of a U.S. offensive against Sadr and his followers.

The United States, now with the support of an Iraqi government that officially took over in June, has been struggling to secure the country’s oil facilities since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government in April 2003.

In the north, where sabotage has kept an export pipeline to Turkey mostly shut since last year’s U.S.-led invasion, a domestic oil pipeline near Iraq’s northern Kirkuk fields was hit by an explosion.

The blast was on a pipeline between Kirkuk and Iraq’s largest refinery at Baiji, a Reuters witness said.

Gunmen attacked the North Oil Company security headquarters overnight, killing one officer and injuring two, police said. The attack took place in the Kiwan area, a center of oil installations 6 miles north of Kirkuk. The attackers escaped unharmed, according to Captain Ferhad Mohammad from the Kirkuk police operations room.

Insurgents have also targeted oil officials, tankers carrying imports of refined products and supply routes deemed vital for reconstruction efforts already suffering delay.

Southern exports have been running through a 42-inch pipeline at around one million barrels per day since saboteurs attacked the larger pipeline on August 9.

Ghadhban said Thursday Iraq had lost $2.7 billion of revenue since the U.S-invasion from sabotage against export pipelines.

Attacks against the rest of the network, he said, cost the country another $3 billion as refinery output fell and imports of gasoline and other refined products. (Reuters)

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