Posted on 06/13/2003 8:18:53 AM PDT by Freebird Forever
Makhoul (Iraq): Fires blazed on the main export pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields to Turkey on Friday after what residents said were twin bomb attacks aimed at sabotaging deliveries which the US-led coalition is poised to resume.
An AFP correspondent saw two separate fires on the pipeline, 15 kilometres from the key refinery town of Baiji, close to the main highway between Baghdad and the northern regional capital Mosul.
US military helicopters hovered overhead.
Residents questioned by AFP at the nearby Al-Amin coffee shop said the pipeline had been attacked by Iraqis using explosives around 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, the same day Iraq awarded its first post-war oil export contracts. 1645 "We heard two explosions and ran," said the coffee shop's owner, Abu Ala. "We saw fire shooting out of the pipeline in two places. Shortly afterwards two American helicopters arrived."
Customers said it had been an act of sabotage.
"Some Iraqis came and blew it up," said Kazem Ibrahim. "It's to stop the Americans taking the oil out to Turkey," said Khidr Aziz.
A coalition military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed there had been "a couple of explosions" in the Makhoul area but insisted preliminary reports did not indicate sabotage.
"Army Corps of Engineers and some Iraqi engineers went to assess it -- they don't believe that it's any kind of hostile activity," he said.
But the spokesman also charged that there had been accidental explosions on the pipeline in the past due to lack of maintenance, something roundly denied by officials at Baiji refinery.
"To my knowledge it's the first time that there has been such an explosion on the main pipeline" to the Turkish border, the refinery's deputy director told AFP, asking for his name to be withheld. He added he could not immediately confirm the cause of the blasts.
Less than an hour's drive north of Saddam Hussein's native city of Tikrit, the mainly Sunni Arab region around Baiji was considered a stronghold of his Sunni-dominated regime and several residents expressed hostility to the US-led occupation.
"The Iraqis won't change. If Saddam disappears, there will be 20 others emerging every day," said Hussein Abu Ali.
US Central Command alleged Friday a new threat to coalition troops in the Kirkuk region from sympathisers of the al-Qaeda Islamic militant network of Osama bin Laden.
"The 173rd Airborne Brigade conducted a raid Thursday near Kirkuk after receiving intelligence information about alleged anti-coalition elements. They apprehended 74 suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizers," Centcom said in a short statement.
US commanders had previously put the main blame for the spate of deadly attacks against coalition troops here on Saddam loyalists although they acknowledged that foreign "fanatics" might also have a role.
President George W. Bush's administration cited links between the Saddam regime and international terrorism as well as its possession of weapons of mass destruction as reasons for invading Iraq, but has failed to produce hard evidence of either.
Ground forces chief Lieutenant General David McKiernan said coalition troops were daily facing new tactics from their adversaries in what he described as a constantly shifting guerrilla war.
"We have seen more sophisticated techniques," McKiernan said. "As you fight the enemy, he adapts his techniques and his tactics."
The pipeline fires dented the euphoria here over the award of the first post-war contracts for oil liftings as the US-led administration prepared to relaunch exports.
The first contracts will not be affected as they were for crude from the southern oilfields around Basra, or Kirkuk crude already in storage at the other end of Iraq's northern export pipeline in the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
But the pipeline is considered vital for US plans to resume large-scale oil exports to fund the huge costs of post-war reconstruction.
The Iraqi oil ministry has already recruited some 3,000 security guards to protect its exposed infrastructure around the country, its acting chief Thamir Ghadhban said on Monday.
Indeed. And they'll put the fires out and move the oil, though constant attacks on the pipeline can be expected and they know it.
I'm envisioning thousands of good ole Texas oilfield workers descending on Iraq oil fields with deer rifles over their shoulders.
U.S. soldiers stand next to a fire on the main oil pipeline from the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhun June 13, 2003. Turkey said on Friday investigations were under way to establish whether sabotage was to blame for a blast on the Iraqi section of a pipeline carrying oil to Turkey. Photo by Hurriyet/Reuters
A television crew watchs a fire after two explosions damaged an oil pipeline in the Makhoul region, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, in what Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul called sabotage, but U.S. and another Turkish official said may have been an accident, on Friday, June 13, 2003. The explosions Thursday night were on the Kirkuk-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline. (AP Photo/Hurriyet)
The oil industry is a cruel world...governments are played like fiddles...intrigues both subtle and gross occur.
Myself have worked in the oil patch for over 2 decades..at the front end as they say,..my handiwork is the physical stuff..from pump jacks to Oil/gas process facilites.
Much of my handiwork is in the mideast.
During the lead up time window to the first Persian Gulf war..our firm was building frac modules for the Iranians...the frac systems involve steam injection to to enhance quicker oil volume extraction.
The reason:.....Russia was slant drilling under the Iranian border... draining the Iranian oil field.
Now it gets comical..as the same American firm which gave us the contract to build for the Iranians..was the same in a consortium that gave the Russians frac modules years earlier : )
The Iranians were frrreeking!..hurry hurry, then the gulf war hit,and a ban on shipping in the gulf.
The Iranian project terminated...what was completed sat in the yard and rusted for nearly a decade until some buyer scooped it all at a wallmart price.
The Russian oil firms kept sucking the Iranian oil up.
The oil industry is a scary place for the uninitiated..many nations get screwed to the floor and have little in the way of recouping lost revenues in ventures.
Smart firms research realities..they are like the Insider trader who never gets caught.
Playing both side assures a decent return on investment.
The oil sector is also very vengefull....history can tie oilmen to wars and political overthrow..but thats a story for another day :)
Tea?
The Russian oilmen I met, it was: vodka,vodka,vodka,girls,girls,girls,vodka,vodka,vodka,girls,girls,girls,repeated until takeoff time.
Yet Russia was moderate bizarre compared to Karachi Pakistan.
I guess he wondered if their was a coupe overnight during a contract...as he woke up to see people running thru the streets covered in blood head to toe.
Looking down from his suite he see's a doorway..with a bullock tied up..and people praying to it.
Next a guy comes up in great pagentry and crowd hysteria..pulls out a huge sword..and slices the bullocks head off...blood torqueing everywhere.
The festival ended that night..the blood ran in the streets..the next days..the stench..the flies.
He was sure glad to get home;
I'd just roar from his stories..and the one liners.."Ya know ..the rest of the world is really $%#@ing weird"!
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