Iraq's southern oil exports are expected to remain reduced over the next five days as engineers work on repairing sabotaged pipelines linking oilfields to export storage tanks, an oil official said on Monday.
The South Oil Company official denied media reports that the sabotage had forced authorities to suspend oil exports from the country's two southern terminals, saying the attacks had only cut flows.
Iraq's oil infrastructure is being attacked almost daily and the US-backed government's spending on increased security for pipelines has so far failed to end the sabotage.
"Oil is still flowing from the fields to the terminals, but at a reduced rate. Repairing the pipelines will take around five days," said the South Oil Company official, who declined to be identified.
Loadings at Gulf offshore platforms were running at 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) on Monday, compared to the same rate on Sunday and two million bpd a week ago, according to a shipping agent monitoring the two southern terminals.
The tanker Front Vanguard was loading at 22,000 barrels per hour from the Basra terminal, formerly known as Mina al-Bakr. The Hyundai Star was loading at the same rate and the Unicorn at 16,000 barrels per hour.
There were no tankers loading crude oil at the nearby Khor al-Amaya terminal, which has not seen activity in days.
Iraq's Gulf exports recovered last week after an export pipeline capable of carrying 1.5 million bpd from southern fields to the two terminals was reopened following sabotage.
Another oil official said on Monday that Iraq had struck its first post-war Kirkuk term contract with Turkey and is set to load a spot cargo of its northern crude for independent trading company Vitol's North Atlantic unit.
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