Pipelines and petrol storage depot attacked in Iraq

Pipelines and a petrol storage depot were attacked in three different parts of Iraq, setting fires that blazed for hours and lost millions of gallons of oil, officials and media reports said today.

Rebels firing RPG rockets hit storage tanks in southern Baghdad yesterday, creating fires that burned about 10 million litres (2.6 million gallons) of petrol, said Issam Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.

He said Iraqi police were investigating the attack.

Also yesterday, a pipeline exploded in the al-Mashahda area 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Baghdad, in what Jihad called “an act of sabotage”.

“The explosion led to the destruction of (part of) the pipeline and to the leakage of vast quantities of oil products,” Jihad said.

He said he had no immediate information about another reported attack on oil pipelines in northern Iraq.

Al-Jazeera television reported today that massive fires were burning following attacks on Saturday on four pipelines in the area between Tikrit and Beji. But an AP stringer reported seeing four fires blazing from pipelines further north, between Beji and Mosul, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Baghdad.

Al-Jazeera quoted officials as saying those fires were caused by saboteurs.

The Oil Ministry introduced rationing on Thursday to overcome shortages that have created mile-long (kilometre-long) queues of cars at petrol stations and waits up to 12 hours. At the same time the U.S. military began to crack down on black marketeers.

Multiple causes have created the shortages, including sabotage and difficulties restoring crude oil supplies from war-damaged and antiquated refineries. In addition an estimated 250,000 newly imported cars, most secondhand, that have entered the country since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Iraq has the world’s second-largest oil reserves, second only to neighbouring Saudi Arabia.