Oil pipeline explodes west of Baghdad

An oil pipeline exploded and caught fire west of Baghdad today, sending flames shooting high into the sky, the US military said.

The cause of the explosion near the town of Hit, about 95 miles west of Baghdad, was being investigated, US military spokeswoman 1st Lieut Mary Pervez said. There were no US casualties, she said.

No other details were immediately available.

The explosion occurred on the same day Iraq was set to restart its first post-war oil exports.

Tankers in recent days have been loading crude for export at storage facilities in the Turkish oil terminal Ceyhan.

Iraq’s oil pipeline from the northern fields of Kirkuk to Ceyhan had been expected to start pumping Sunday once the tankers start taking on crude.

However, Iraqi oil officials in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, said today that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is still not ready to begin carrying crude.

Two explosions damaged the pipeline earlier this month in what Turkey’s foreign minister called sabotage.

The pipeline damaged today was in a different part of the country and was not expected to affect plans for the Kirkuk-Ceyhan operations. However, sabotage on Iraq’s oil and electricity infrastructure has hurt reconstruction efforts overall.

Walid Jawad, director of projects for the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline, said that most of the sabotage has been repaired but a lack of good communication with Turkey and the looting of control mechanisms have delayed a resumption of pumping.

He said Iraq still needs to import some materials to get the controls up and running.

The pipeline stopped pumping during the war on Iraq, when shipping was stopped and the Ceyhan storage tanks filled to their capacity of eight million barrels.