Militia Set Fire to Iraq Oil Well in New Tactic

By Khaled Oweis

BAGHDAD - Shi’ite militia have set fire to an oil well in southern Iraq, Baghdad said Monday, adopting a new tactic in the uprising against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government.

"The well in a field near the city of Amara was targeted on Sunday," an Iraqi government spokesman said.

While the attack on one of thousands of oil wells in Iraq’s southern fields will have negligible impact for production, it underlines the threat to Iraq’s oil infrastructure from the Mehdi Army, followers of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The militia is mostly active in central and southern Iraq and has threatened to attack oil facilities in response to the U.S. offensive against Sadr and his followers in the city of Najaf, a center of Shi’ite learning.

The uprising has already forced Iraq to close its main southern oil export pipeline, reducing the country’s export flows by almost half for the past week, oil officials and shippers monitoring the situation said.

The unrest has cut the country’s exports to about 900,000 barrels per day since last Monday, when saboteurs attacked the pipeline and a U.S. offensive against Sadr’s followers spread to several Iraqi cities.

"The pipeline is not operating. We do not know when conditions would improve to re-open it," said a South Oil Company official, who declined to be identified.

"Decisions are made on a day-to-day basis. It is not even known whether employees will show up to work tomorrow," he said, adding that employees working from the headquarters have been ordered to stay at home for the past week.

LIMITED PIPELINE EXPORTS

Limited exports from the southern oilfields to the country’s two offshore Gulf terminals continued to run through a second 42-inch pipeline that has a capacity of one million barrels per day (bpd), the official added.

The tanker Utah was loading at 25,000 barrels per hour from the Basra terminal and the Astro Polaris was loading at 17,000 barrels per hour from the Khor al-Amaya terminal, a shipping agent said.

Saboteurs attacked the larger 48-inch pipeline, which has a capacity of around 1.5 million bpd, last Monday.

The pipeline was repaired but operated only briefly before authorities shut it down following intelligence that the Shi’ite militia fighting U.S. forces might attack it.

Sabotage has also disrupted Iraq’s domestic oil network more frequently over the past week, helping to create shortages of gasoline and other refined products, especially in Baghdad.

A domestic oil pipeline in central Iraq remained on fire on Monday, three days after saboteurs attacked it. (Reuters)

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