Page 8 - MEOG Week 33 2021

MEOG POLICY MEOG
Militants attack Bai Hassan again
IRAQ
IRAQ’S northern Bai Hassan oilfield was once again the target of a militant attack this week with explosives believed to have been detonated by so-called IS fighters in the area near Kirkuk.
Speaking to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, a local police official said that no damage to the field had occurred, adding that a manhunt was ongoing for those responsible. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
IS sleeper cells have increased attacks in recent months, focusing their efforts on the ‘tri- angle of death’ area between Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Diyala.
In May, explosives were used to target wells 177 and 183 at the oilfield which, together with the Avana Dome of the Kirkuk field and Baba Gurgur, are estimated to produce around 370,000 barrels per day (bpd), contributing a significant amount of state-owned North Oil Co. (NOC’s) total output.
While that attack had no impact on produc- tion, the Ministry of Oil said that it resulted in “the martyrdom and wounding of a number of
security forces and energy police”.
Output from the NOC-operated fields has at
various points been diverted towards the Baiji refinery near Tikrit and exported through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline (also known as the Iraq-Turkey pipeline) or through the Kurdistan Regional Government- (KRG) owned conduit, which connects to the Ceyhan line at the Fish- khabour border crossing.
Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces took control of the fields in 2014 ostensibly to prevent them falling into the hands of IS and exported the out- put independently of Iraq’s oil marketer SOMO, much to the ire of Baghdad which resumed con- trol of the assets in 2017 following Erbil’s efforts to seek independence and Iraq’s declaration of victory over IS. At that point, flows from the field through the conduit to Ceyhan ceased with the KRG saying its output and exports had fallen by 250,000 bpd as a result.
NOC then began deploying crude for domes- tic refining with small volumes temporarily trucked to Iran.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 33 18•August•2021