Baghdad postpones repairs to crude pipeline linking Iraqi north to Syria's Banias port
Platts, 04.12.2009
The Iraqi government has postponed a decision on repairing a crude oil pipeline linking the country's northern network with the Syrian port of Banias in the country's northwest, the al-Sumaria TV network reported on its web site.
Iraq approached Russia's state-owned Stroytransgaz to repair the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline in December 2007. Citing Stroytransgaz CEO Alexander Ryazanov, al-Sumaria said the Russian company submitted a plan to fix the pipeline to the Iraqi cabinet some time ago, but no decision had been made because of the country's political situation.
No details were given on what Ryazanov meant by political situation, but Iraq's cabinet is made up of various ethnic and religious groups which are often at odds with each other, including settling on a federal oil and gas law that has been delayed for around two years, as well as on an election law for polls scheduled for no later than January 31 next year.
The pipeline, built in the 1950s, was shut in the 1970s when relations deteriorated between the rival Ba'ath parties in power Syria and Iraq. Iraq reopened the line in 2000 to bypass UN sanctions, shipping some 200,000 b/d of Kirkuk crude to Syria, which used the crude in its own refineries and exported an equal amount of its own oil to markets.
The aging and leaky pipeline, which is around 800 km (500 miles) long with a capacity of 300,000 b/d, has been shut since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, when the main K3 pumping station along the pipeline was among the first installations to be targeted by US air strikes.
