Blast hits Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline in southeast, causes large spill

The blast occurred in a section of the pipeline in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa in Turkey, the Anatolian Agency said, adding initial findings blamed the incident on an abrupt change of pressure in the network.Â

 

"We can not talk about sabotage. Our examinations revealed that the pipeline was broken from the inside because of pressure," Yusuf Yavascan, governor of the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, told the A.A.

 

The twin pipeline, which runs from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan and has a capacity to carry some 70 million tons of crude a year, was also bombed previously by the terrorist PKK organization. It carried about 40 million barrels of Iraqi oil to Ceyhan last year, according to Turkey's state-run oil and gas company, BOTAS.

 

Authorities shut down the flow as oil spilled as far as two kilometers from the site of the blast, reaching the shores of a major dam in the region, A.A. said.

 

Earlier in the day, Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said that the explosion caused an oil spill in the region. He said works were under way to clean up the area.

 

A similar explosion at the Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline took place three years ago, spilling around 20,000 barrels of oil, which took months to clean up, into the area near the same dam lake.

 
It was not immediately clear when the conduit would be re-opened.

 

In August, a powerful blast disrupted for three weeks the flow through another oil pipeline in Turkey that carries Azeri oil from Baku to Ceyhan, for which the terrorist PKK organization claimed responsibility.

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