Oil terminal shut after boat bombing
US military officials were trying to determine the launching point of the unprecedented suicide boat attack on two offshore oil terminals that are the sole outlet of Iraqi crude from the south. The attacks killed two US Navy sailors.
Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulloum told reporters that the Al-Basra Oil Terminal closed after Saturday evening's attacks and would open today, at the earliest.
The Al-Basra terminal was one of two terminals targeted in the attacks. The other, smaller terminal, Khawr al-Amaya, reopened yesterday morning.
The Al-Basra terminal unloads up to 900,000 barrels a day of Iraq's total current exports of around 1.6 million barrels per day, he said. He would not say how much that production was worth.
The boat bombings were the first maritime attack against Iraqi oil facilities in the Gulf an apparently new tactic in the Iraq conflict.
Three dhows, small boats often used in the Gulf, pulled in near the Khawr al-Amaya and Al-Basra terminals in Gulf waters off Iraq's port of Umm Qasr. The dhows exploded when approached by teams sent to intercept them.
The dhow near Khawr al-Amaya flipped over a US Navy interception craft, killing the sailors and wounding five others.
Two other dhows exploded about 50 yards from the Al-Basra terminal when interception teams fired on at least one of them, Bahr al-Ulloum said. The blast damaged generators at the terminal, he said.
"The export of oil from Khawr al-Amaya resumed this morning," said Bahr al-Ulloum.
"We hope it will resume from Al-Basra tomorrow."
Insurgents have often struck oil pipelines in Iraq, repeatedly cutting off exports from northern oil fields to Turkey.
About 160,000 barrels per day are being exported from the north.
Another 700,000 barrels per day are shipped through Khawr al-Amaya, which opened two months ago. The rest goes through the Al-Basra terminal, Bahr al-Ulloum said.
Bahr al-Ulloum said he believed al-Qaida was behind the boat bombings. "This is my feeling, I don't have evidence of it," he told reporters.
