Crude Oil Rises as Power Failure Halts Oil Shipments From Southern Iraq

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose above $66 a barrel in New York after a power failure across Iraq forced the suspension of exports from the country’s southern terminals.

Shipments of about 1.6 million barrels a day were halted indefinitely after the outage shut pumps at the Basra Oil Terminal, Jabbar al-Leaby, who manages the state-owned South Oil Co., said today. Iraq, the fifth-largest producer in the Middle East, is sending oil to storage during the blackout. Production in Ecuador is rising after protests slashed output last week.
“The Iraqi outage is cutting shipments and boosting prices,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts.

Bloomberg