Iraq hopes to resume pumping oil through Turkey on Tuesday afternoon after safety checks following two devastating earthquakes revealed no damage.
(Bloomberg) —
Iraq hopes to resume pumping oil through Turkey on Tuesday afternoon after safety checks following two devastating earthquakes revealed no damage.
“They checked the pipes and there was no damage to them or to the storage tanks,” an official from SOMO, Iraq’s state oil-marketing firm, said to Bloomberg. “The pumping could resume today. It is highly probable to resume.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Turkey ordered the resumption of crude flows to the Ceyhan export terminal on the Mediterranean coast, according to an official with direct knowledge of the matter.
State pipeline operator Botas had halted flows to the facility as a precaution on Monday morning, after the first of the two massive earthquakes shook the region.
Brent oil futures are up for a second straight day to around $82.50 a barrel, partly because of the shutdown at Ceyhan.
The port exported over 1 million barrels a day in January, or 1% of global supplies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Most of that oil is from Iraq and Azerbaijan.
Iraq’s full-month exports from the port won’t be affected, according to another official with knowledge of the matter. Baghdad sends about 75,000 barrels a day to Ceyhan, while the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government sends about 400,000 barrels a day.
Late on Monday, Tribeca Shipping, a port agent, said the terminals serving Azeri oil would be shut at least until Wednesday.
Monday’s magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes left thousands of people dead in Turkey and Syria.
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