Iraqi Forces Control 40 Percent of Southern Oil Fields, U.S. Military Says
By Sean Evers
Rumaila, Iraq, April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Iraqi forces retain control over 40 percent of the country's southern Rumaila oil fields, which cover an area the size of New Jersey, as the allied invasion of Iraq enters its third week, the U.S. military's top engineer in the Gulf said.
``Out of the 1,000 oil wells in the south, we control everything which is basically below Basra, that's 600 wells,'' Colonel Michael Morrow said in an interview at the Central Command Center in Qatar. Excluding the nine wells that were set alight by the Iraqi forces in the early days of the war, ``the rest of the infrastructure looks normal on first inspection, besides some minor damage,'' he said.
Oil prices have fluctuated over the past two weeks on reports about the extent of the damage inflicted so far on Iraq's energy industry. The greater the damage done to the country's infrastructure, the longer Iraq's oil output, about 3 percent of the world's total, will remain off the market.
Brent crude oil for June settlement fell 38 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $24.83 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange at 9:13 a.m. London time.
Basra Refinery
Allied forces have taken control of Basra refinery, Morrow said. ``It appears to have been shut down in a safe mode, which means production could be restarted once a detailed inspection is completed,'' he said.
Iraq, which holds the world's second-largest oil reserves, produced about 2.5 million barrels a day in February, half of which came from the country's southern oil fields. Before the war, Iraq exported oil through its Persian Gulf terminal Mina al-Bakr, and by pipeline through Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
The country's northern oil fields around Kirkuk remain in the hands of the Iraqi regime, and the allies ``have no real idea of their condition,'' said Morrow. Ahead of the March 20 invasion Iraq exported close to 2 million barrels a day, half of which came from the northern fields.
The allied coalition's plan to seize control of Iraq's northern cities and oil fields has been stalled by Turkey's decision not to permit U.S. troops to invade its southern neighbor from Turkish soil.
Two oil wells continue to burn in the south, Morrow said. Teams from the state-owned Kuwait Oil Co. and Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. should succeed in extinguishing the remaining fires within 10 days, the U.S. colonel said.
In 1991 the Iraqi army detonated more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait as it withdrew from the emirate after the Gulf War.