Iraq Resumes Kirkuk Crude Oil Exports Via Kurdish-Run Pipeline

  • Oil flowing to Turkey from Kirkuk at 90,000 barrels a day
  • North Oil working to re-start another field after Kurd clash

An Iraqi oil employee checks pipelines at the Bai Hassan oil field, west of the multi-ethnic northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, on October 19, 2017.

Photographer: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images
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Iraq resumed pumping oil from a field in the disputed Kirkuk province, the first sign that output is recovering from last week’s fighting between government troops and Kurdish forces that hobbled pipeline exports from OPEC’s second-biggest producer.

Iraq’s central government, which rejected a Kurdish independence referendum last month, began exporting from the Avana field in Kirkuk through a pipeline operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government, according to an official at Iraq’s North Oil Co. and a port agent. Crude began flowing on Wednesday at a rate of about 90,000 barrels a day, they said.