KIRKUK, Iraq, Sept 5 (AFP) - Firefighters hope to put out Sunday a four-day-old blaze on the key northern Iraqi oil pipeline to Turkey, with repairs set to last one week.
"At 12 pm (0800 GMT) today, we will extinguish the fire and tomorrow the process of repairs will start and last for one week," said Jumma Ahmed, the fire department chief for the Northern Oil Co.
"This is the first fire to last for four days."
Iraq's northern oil exports were abruptly halted Thursday when saboteurs detonated a bomb on the strategic pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
NOC officials described the blast as the biggest attack ever on Iraq's northern infrastructure. The blaze sent huge mountains of smoke billowing over the site of the blast in Riyadh and 50 kilometres (30 miles) north in Kirkuk.
Saboteurs sent the Iraqi oil industry into a deeper panic Saturday with an attack on a pipeline near the southern port city of Basra.
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. Post-war pipeline sabotage has cost Iraq more than a billion dollars in revenues.
Exports from the Kirkuk fields had been brought to a virtual standstill for well over a year, putting all the burden of exports on Gulf tanker terminals serving Iraq's southern oilfields before NOC resumed pumping to Turkey last month.