Iraq Resumes Crude Oil Exports from Northern Kirkuk

Exports from Iraq 's northern Kirkuk oil fields to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey have resumed after three-day outage caused by a bomb attack against a key pipeline, two Middle East shipping agents said Thursday.

"The flow resumed at 1800 local time (1500 GMT) Wednesday," a shipping agent based in Ceyhan told Dow Jones Newswires. "They are pumping at 22,000 barrels an hour (or 528,000 barrels a day)," he said.

On Monday, attackers blew up part of the export pipeline near a village called Shurgat south of Mosul governorate, which caused flows to be suspended.

"One vessel is loading with Kirkuk crude at Ceyhan and four others are waiting to load," another shipping agent said.

Iraq normally exports an average of 300,000 to 350,000 barrels a day via the pipeline, though the second shipping agent said Iraq has pumped 700,000 barrels a day since the flows resumed to compensate for the outage. The pipeline was idle for many years due to acts of sabotage after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The pipeline has suffered frequent attacks on both sides of the Turkey-Iraq border. Last week the pipeline was cut in a similar location in order to smuggle crude oil.