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Page added on June 20, 2014
Baiji oil refinery secured as Iraq fighting continues
Iraqi government forces regained full control Thursday of the country’s biggest oil refinery following heavy fighting as the country scrabbles to contain the Sunni militants which still threaten further advances in northern Iraq.
Insurgents pressing the major offensive were repelled from the 320,000 b/d-capacity Baiji plant after clashes Wednesday and early Thursday, according to reports. Fighting began at the refinery early on Wednesday, when some storage tanks for oil products were set ablaze.
OIL SECTOR IMPACT
* ICE Brent crude continued to trade near an earlier nine-month high amid market concerns over the escalating violence in Iraq.
* Oil exports from Iraq’s two southern oil terminals remain unaffected by the violence. During the first half of June exports were loading at normal rates of 2.5-2.6 million b/d, Iraqi oil sources said Thursday.
* The 320,000 b/d-capacity Baiji plant remains shutdown after its workers were evacuated on Tuesday sparking further queues for fuel at retail pumps.
* Baiji produces approximately half of Iraq’s refined products, including 7 million liters/day of gasoline. It also supplies gas feedstock for a northern gas processing plant, which has also been forced to close. This will cause a
shortfall of around 1,300 mt/day of LPG in addition to reducing gas feed to power stations around Baghdad.
* Turkey says it will continue to export disputed oil supplies from the autonomous Kurdistan region despite escalating violence in Iraq.
* Italy’s Eni has not evacuated any staff from the Zubair field in southern Iraq despite concerns of further advances by Sunni insurgents, Chairwoman Emma Marcegaglia said Thursday.
* The Kurdistan Regional Government has proposed using its own pipeline system to enable the federal Iraqi government to continue exporting some crude from the Kirkuk oil field in the troubled north of the country.
POLITICS
* US President Barack Obama is to make a statement on Iraq later Thursday as he faces rising pressure to respond to advances by Sunni militant.
* Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday ordered security officers back to active duty to bolster forces battling the militant offensive.
* Saudi Arabia warned Wednesday of the risks of civil war in Iraq with unpredictable consequences for the region, after Sunni militants seized large areas from Shiite-led government forces
* Militants seized three villages in northern Iraq on Wednesday during clashes with security forces and residents that left 20 civilians dead, a local official said
* India said Thursday it knows the location of its 40 construction workers abducted in violence-torn Iraq, as several of their families said they have spoken with the captured men, AFP reported.
13 Comments on "Baiji oil refinery secured as Iraq fighting continues"
Juan Pueblo on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 10:37 am
It is very lucky that these ISIS people lacked the intelligence to understand that it was in their best interest to destroy the refinery and deprive Iraq’s government of its products for months or years to come. They may have wasted their best chance to win the war much faster by making that mistake. That refinery makes a big difference. Destroying it would have bought them time to consolidate their positions elsewhere.
In times like these I am grateful for people’s stupidity; just imagine the damage they could have caused if one of them had a fully functioning brain.
rockman on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 10:52 am
I’ve wondered what happen to Baghdad Bob famous for his Gulf War reports of Iraq “victorious battles”. Sounds like he got a gig with the new gov’t. Yep…certainly the type of coalition partner you want watching our 6.
A fresh report from the front: Iraq’s government insisted Thursday that security forces were still in control of the country’s largest oil refinery. A witness who drove past the Beiji refinery told the Associated Press that militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had hung black banners on the refinery’s watch towers and were manning checkpoints around the building. He said a huge fire in one of its tankers was raging at the time.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 11:14 am
rockman — The journalism and “television talking heads” professions are now packed with Baghdad Bobs, all of them reporting the “official” government/industry positions on issues regardless of how absurdly false those positions are, and regardless of how purely propaganda-oriented they are. Don’t you think?
Jaun Pueblo — My thoughts exactly, well, more or less, as I read this article. Now that the “terrorists” are running amok in Iraq, they can probably destroy oil industry infrastructure at any time of their choosing. They may be holding onto that as an “ace in the hole”, so to speak. If things start going badly for them, I would expect them to start blowing shit up as a final “f**k you” gesture. Before they resort to those extremes, they’ll probably try to “convert” villagers to their cause and bolster their hard-fought gains.
bobinget on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 11:59 am
As Rockman says, perfectly fine refineries in Texas or
Ontario burst into flames on a regular basis.
Often, unless there are fatalities refinery fires go unreported, except to the trade. Now, imagine one
with hundreds of bullet holes in all those vital organs.
Germans technicians all took early flights home.
In years to come it will take a different set of techies
at least another year to get any refinery up and running after damage done here.
What the Iraqi Army should be doing is blockading all roads near pipelines and the two remaining refineries.
I assure you, the tactic of denying Iraq fuel and power
is a paramount goal of Sunni fighters. All those highly experienced Saddam Generals the US shit-canned have been plotting this return to power for ten years.
The article should have reported.
Baghdad will not have enough electric power this summer to run air-conditioning. The sad truth, no large city can run today w/o climate controls.
I predict chaos.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 12:02 pm
bobinget said “I predict chaos”.
bob, I’ll see your “I predict chaos” and raise you ten…
Davey on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 12:20 pm
Aces and 8’s. That was wild bill’s hand when he was shot dead in Deadwood. Since you are talking poker NR.
Seriously civil wars destroy infrastructure for a variety of reason. Expect Iraq to more and more resemble its neighbor Syria. How do you like that “lobby of Plenty”. Is the punch bowl still full?
rockman on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:09 pm
NR – Good point. It’s so true: almost all the media, including a lot of blogs, want to be the first to toss out the “big scoop” even if they haven’t verified it. And if it’s a really juicy some might not care even if they suspect it might not be accurate.
IMHO it falls into the category of “better be first, flashy and inaccurate” then “slow and boringly accurate”. And today most don’t even bother to apologize when they get it wrong. They just push on to the next flash story.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 1:32 pm
“And today most don’t even bother to apologize when they get it wrong.”
Absolutely.
And the point I am trying to make is that many of those Baghdad Bob wannabes intentionally get it wrong, either acting on orders from their superiors or free-lancing the bullshit propaganda to improve their sales opportunities or to advance their own agendas.
foxv on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 4:00 pm
well that refinery will be out of action long enough to make gas shortages a real problem for the Iraqi people and the government. And when people start getting uncomfortable they start to pick sides.
I suspect they didn’t destroy the terminal because they wanted to claim it and use it for their own war effort.
But be assured as mentioned already, if things start going badly for ISIS they will start “burning bridges”. And there are a lot of vulnerable things to burn in Iraq
J-Gav on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 5:36 pm
Juan, NR et al – There can be no ‘winner’ in the conflict presently playing out in Iraq. No group is in a position to unify what used to be a country. The only ‘winners’ to pop their ugly heads up when the smoke settles will be the arms dealers and the energy companies which invested in regions of Iraq where oil can still be exported.
Makati1 on Sat, 21st Jun 2014 10:46 pm
Iraq in three parts … eventually. The ME is going back to the pre World War 2 divisions by the West.
Arthur on Sun, 22nd Jun 2014 1:13 am
Make that pre WW1, makati. The border between Iraq and Syria was the result of negotiations between two imperialists, the Brit Sykes and the Frenchman Picot in 1916. Iraq for Britain, Syria for France. But in 2014 Sykes-Picot is history and so are Iraq and Syria. These ISIS chaps are doing the dirty work and are paving the way for a caliphate and in the end the Turks will ‘intervene’ and finish the job. SA will join and so will Egypt.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 22nd Jun 2014 5:44 am
Art, always provocative and entertaining. You make a good point and a definite possibility. I see a big issue for the ME is food and water. This caliphate will struggle to overcome this and be nothing like the glorious past. More like broken Afghanistan after the Shia/Sunni civil war leave the ME oil infrastructure in tatters.