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Second blaze hits crucial Iraq oil export pipeline

REUTERS, Shirqaat
A second blaze on Iraq's crucial oil export pipeline to Turkey sent smoke billowing into the air yesterday, and officials at the scene said sabotage was suspected.
A North Oil Company official at the scene of the fire said it was caused by a blast on Saturday night. The fire was near the site of a blaze which erupted on Friday and which officials said had been caused by a bomb.
Meanwhile, sabotage of a water pipeline yesterday caused huge floods in parts of Baghdad and
deprived 300,000 people of running water, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
ICRC spokeswoman Nada Dumani said a rocket-propelled grenade hit an open-air section of a pipeline linking the Sabah Missan pumping station with the eastern Baghdad district of Rasafa.
Repairs to Iraq's key oil export pipeline to Turkey may take as long as a month, the US army said yesterday, as a fire continued to rage at the scene of the attack.
"The Northern Oil Company is on site to make repairs which are estimated to take at least two weeks
to one month," said army spokeswoman Specialist Nicole Thompson.
But an AFP photographer at the scene of the sabotage yesterday said it was deserted and said the fire sparked by the explosion early Friday was still burning.
"The damage to the pipeline means seven million dollars losses every day," the US civil administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, said Sunday.
Iraq's top oil official Thamer Ghadhban had earlier said the disruption meant a loss of money
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badly needed for the reconstruction of the war-shattered country.
He said Iraq was losing about 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) in exports because of the sabotage.
The attack on the pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields around Kirkuk to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan happened just two days after the key export route was finally reopened following the US-led war.
The acting oil minister said he did not know who had carried out the sabotage but "what is definite is that they were endeavouring to stop oil flows to the refinery ... and to stop exports."
Iraq, currently exporting 700,000 barrels per day from its southern oilfields around Basra, has the world's second largest reserves.
Sabotage and looting have plagued the oil sector since Saddam was toppled in April, with damage to wells leaving just 150 of 700 in working order, officials have said.