Page 13 - DMEA Week 03 2022

DMEA PIPELINES DMEA

BOTAS resumes Kirkuk-Ceyhan

flows following explosion

MIDDLE EAST TURKISH state-owned pipeline operator Botas of Oil (MoO) said on January 19 that flows had
this week said that it had stopped oil flows resumed at 75,000 bpd.
through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline to deal In September, the MoO announced that the
with an explosion and fire in the south-eastern governments of Iraq and Turkey would work to
Kahramnmaras province before reopening it the re-open the 970-km pipeline which carries Iraqi
next day. crude from Kirkuk to export facilities in Ceyhan
The company said on January 18 that the on the Turkish Mediterranean coast.
explosion had caused a fire, adding that fire- Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar met
fighters and emergency personnel had been sent with Turkish Ambassador to Baghdad Ali Riza
to contain the blaze. It added that the explosion Guney to discuss plans “to rehabilitate the stra-
had occurred near the “511th kilometre” of the tegic pipeline to transfer crude oil” from the Gulf
pipeline, but that the cause of the incident was to Europe.
unknown. Kirkuk-Ceyhan, which is often also referred
Kahramanmaras Mayor Hayrettin Gungor to as the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline (ITP), consists
was quoted by the Ihlas News Agency as say- of two strings, which originally had an original
ing that the explosion had not resulted in any combined nameplate capacity of 1.6mn bpd,
casualties. with the wider, 46-inch (1,168-mm) pipe capable
The following morning, Botas said that the of carrying 1.1mn bpd and the narrower 40-inch
fire had been extinguished and added that “all (1,016-mm) line 500,000 bpd.
necessary measures have been taken by Botas However, following years of sabotage and dis-
teams and oil flow will start within 1 hour”. repair, Kirkuk-Ceyhan has rarely been capable
Flows of crude through the line from the of achieving anywhere near 500,000 bpd and the
Kurdistan region of northern Iraq to Ceyhan ran Iraqi segment of the facility has not been opera-
at around 450,000 barrels per day during 2021, tional since the rise of so-called IS in 2014.
with that average dropping to around 350,000 The Iraqi and Turkish sections meet near a
bpd in October-December. Prior to the explo- metering station at the border town of Fishkha-
sion, the pipeline had been carrying less than bour. Meanwhile, a pipeline built by the Kurdis-
300,000 bpd. tan Regional Government (KRG) in 2013, which
Federal Iraqi crude piped through the line ran runs from the Taq Taq field via Khurmala, also
at less than 90,000 bpd in December, according connects to the Turkish line at Fishkhabour. This
to state oil marketer SOMO. The Iraqi Ministry line was designed to carry 700,000 bpd.™

Week 03 20•January•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P13