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By Hassan Hafidh
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/
Monday, June 23, 2003

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An explosion hit a stalled Iraq oil pipeline on the Syrian border on Monday and firefighters put out a blaze at a gas pipeline damaged in an earlier blast.

"An explosion took place in the oil pipeline near the Syrian border at 1:00 a.m. last night," said an Iraqi Oil Ministry official. He gave no details.

The U.S. military said it was checking the report.

Washington halted the Syrian pipeline by bombing a pumping station during its invasion of Iraq in April, stopping some 200,000 barrels a day of exports at preferential prices.

The U.S. has not announced any intention of reopening the pipeline, and lists Damascus as "a state sponsor of terrorism."

The Syrian pipeline is Iraq's second largest cross-border export link after the northern pipeline which runs from the Kirkuk fields to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

Iraq resumed its first oil exports since the war from Ceyhan on Sunday and pumping on the Ceyhan line is expected to restart by mid-July.

GAS BLAST

Witnesses at the damaged gas pipeline in the western desert said Iraqi civil defense workers had used foam to extinguish a fire that had raged since the blast there on Saturday night.

Oil Ministry officials said that explosion was the work of saboteurs. The U.S. military has not confirmed this.

U.S. officials have said another pipeline explosion and fire that damaged Iraq's main oil export line to Turkey earlier this month was caused by a gas leak. An Oil Ministry official said on Thursday the line was back in working order.

The explosions are hampering efforts to revive Iraq's battered oil sector, the main hope for economic recovery.

"We have started to assess damage inflicted on the gas pipeline near Hit," said Nabil Lamuza, head of planning and studies at the oil ministry, adding that it would take three to five days to repair the damage.

"This is an act of sabotage that will directly hurt the Iraqi people. It will reduce supplies of gas to main power stations," he told Reuters.

Lamuza said an oil pipeline that runs parallel to the gas line and links Iraq's northern and southern oilfields was undamaged. Earlier reports said the oil pipeline had been hit.

Some Iraqis believe the latest pipeline explosions are the work of people angered by last week's prediction by Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an oil pipeline from Iraq to Haifa that has been disused since 1948 will reopen.

"It is better to burn the oil than sell it to Israel," said one Iraqi as he watched the gas pipeline fire near the town of Hit, about 140 km (90 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

De facto oil minister Thamir Ghadhban told the Israeli daily Maariv on the sidelines of an economic meeting in Jordan that Iraq had no intention of selling oil to Israel. Ghadhban, the first Iraqi official known to have spoken to an Israeli newspaper, said the old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was dead.

Iraq had been technically at war with Israel until the U.S.- led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein on April 9.

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