Oil export resumed after boat bombings

Suicide boat bombings targeting Iraq’s key oil industry in the Gulf forced the closure of two major terminals in the Gulf for several hours, but the facilities resumed work loading tankers today, Iraq’s top oil marketing official said.

Late yesterday, suicide attackers detonated explosive-laden boats near the Khawr al-Amaya and al-Basra terminals, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) in Gulf waters off the Iraqi port of Umm al-Qasr, killing two US Navy sailors.

Shamkhi Faraj, who heads Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation, said the forced shutdown would have no effect on overall exports.

“There will be no delay in exporting our oil. We, in fact, resumed exporting oil from the southern oil terminal of Basra today,” Faraj told The Associated Press.

All the crude produced in southern Iraq comes through the two offshore terminals for loading onto tankers. Faraj said it was too early to gauge how much of the facilities’ daily capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day was interrupted.

Iraq’s total daily oil exports have reached 1.9 million barrels per day, with the April 3 reopening of a northern pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey. The industry is aiming to reach two million barrels a day this month.

The blasts also damaged some electric infrastructure, which Faraj said would be repaired. But he said there was no “material damage” and no damage to tankers at the terminals.

Today three tankers were being loaded with crude at al-Basra terminal and a fourth at Khawr al-Amaya, which was opened only two months ago, Faraj told Dow Jones Newswires.

Iraq’s main port, Umm al-Qasr, was not closed down.

Iraqi insurgents have been attacking oil pipelines for months, repeatedly interrupting the vital flow of oil from fields in the north to Turkey. There have also been attacks on southern pipelines.

But yesterday’s attack was the first such maritime raid against offshore oil facilities since US troops invaded Iraqi more than a year ago. The blasts resembled attacks in 2000 and 2002 – blamed on al- Qaida – against the USS Cole and a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen that killed 17 American sailors and a tanker crewman.

In the attack, three dhows, or small boats, drew close to two major oil terminals in Gulf waters about 100 miles from Iraq’s main port, Umm Qasr, and exploded when coalition craft tried to intercept them. A US Navy craft was flipped by the blast, killing the American sailors and injuring five others, the US military said.

Iraq’s al-Basra port, formerly known as Mina al-Bakr, was repeatedly bombed during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran, when the two countries’ armies targeted each others’ oil exports. Iraq renovated the port in 1992, but UN sanctions on the export of oil kept it shuttered until 1996.