KIRKUK - Iraqi oil exports to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan were interrupted on Friday as the result of an established shipping schedule and not because of sabotage, an official at the Northern Oil Company said.
"Oil shipments which began Thursday were interrupted Friday according to an export schedule adopted by the NOC which consists of pumping crude oil on an intermittent basis," the official told AFP from the oil hub of Kirkuk.
"Each week we will export 200,000 to 400,000 barrels per day, but in a sporadic manner. We work this way because the NOC stocks oil in station K2, 110 kilometers west of Kirkuk (225 kilometers, 140 miles north of Baghdad), and in another at the border with Turkey."
The official said that oil pipelines between Iraq and Turkey had not been the target of sabotage for two months.
"This network is protected by 3,000 Iraqi soldiers in and around Kirkuk and by six battalions of the Iraqi army north of Baiji," which lies 50 kilometers to the south.
In London, Bache Financial trader Tony Machacek had cited northern Iraqi oil exports as a factor behind price rises on the London and New York markets.
"The only vaguely bullish development is that the northern Iraqi exports, which only just restarted yesterday, have been closed again this morning," Machacek said.
06/03/2005 13:44 GMT