by Issam al-Sudani
BASRA, Iraq, Sept 4 (AFP) - Saboteurs set ablaze oil pipelines in both northern and southern Iraq Saturday, threatening to further cripple the country's ailing economy and send world prices back upwards.
The attack on a pipeline near the southern port city of Basra came less than two days after the country's key revenue earner was dealt a serious blow by another act of sabotage in the north which halted all exports of Kirkuk crude.
Saboteurs also blew up a secondary pipeline serving the northern oil centre of Kirkuk on Saturday afternoon, a security official said.
In Basra, oil officials scrambled to contain the blaze and salvage the flow of exports.
"The sabotage damaged two parallel pipelines. The first pumps oil to the Harithah electrical plant and the second from the town of Nahr Omar to the Zubeir oil fields," South Oil Company chief executive officer Jabar Ali al-Luaibi told AFP.
"Exports will be affected but it's not immediately possible to quantify the losses," he added.
Police colonel Nuri Jaafar Fayad said the attack occurred at 8:30 am (0430 GMT).
The Zubeir oil fields, together with Rumeilah North and South, have accounted for the vast majority of Iraq's post-war oil exports in the face of repeated attacks on the export artery to Turkey serving the Kirkuk fields.
A southern pipeline had been sabotaged last Sunday and a leak was discovered on another running from the Hamar Mishrif pumping station, south of Basra.
But southern exports had quickly bounced back to almost two million barrels per day (bpd), amid the use of private security companies to help the government achieve its target of three million bpd by 2005.
The secondary pipeline struck in the north was a 14-inch line carrying crude from the Al-Khabaz field, 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Kirkuk, to the Baiji refinery, said Northern Oil Company security chief Ahmed Hassan Ghafif.
It followed a massive attack on the main export line from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterrean port of Ceyhan on Thursday, the largest since last year's US-led invasion.
Thousands of people had to be evacuated from the area, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Kirkuk, and a major motorway was closed due to the size of the blaze.
"The repair work could last up to seven days," said Ghafif.
"Internal pipelines are working but the pipeline exporting crude to Turkey is still out of order. The blaze has been extinguished up to 70 percent but the oil will continue to burn today and maybe until tomorrow."
Kirkuk crude had resumed pumping at a rate of between 600,000 and 800,000 bpd last month and had received a further boost on Tuesday when its first post-war term contract was reached with a Turkish refiner.