BAGHDAD: Oil exports from northern Iraq fell by almost half to an average of 350,067 barrels per day (bpd) in February as a result of an ongoing outage of the pipeline to Turkey, the Kurdistan region’s Ministry of Natural Resources said on Monday.
The pipeline, which carries crude from fields in the autonomous Kurdistan region and Kirkuk to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been idle since Feb. 17 due to “circumstances” inside Turkey, the ministry said. The nearly three-week outage is a major blow to Kurdistan, which depends on revenue from its exports through the pipeline and is struggling to avert an economic collapse induced by low oil prices.
Turkey’s energy ministry said on Feb. 27 it had begun work to repair the pipeline, and an industry source based in the Kurdistan region told Reuters on Sunday the work would be completed “in a day or two”. The pipeline runs through Turkey’s restive southeast, which has seen the worst violence since the 1990s after a two-year ceasefire between the government and Kurdish militants broke down last July.
Turkey has accused the Kurdistan Workers’ Party of blowing up the pipeline, but the militant group denies responsibility. In January, 601,811 bpd were exported through the pipeline.
