Bomb blast damages Iraqi oil pipeline, cutting exports sharply

Bomb blast damages Iraqi oil pipeline, cutting exports sharply

By Louis Meixler
ASSOCIATED PRESS
8:24 a.m. May 10, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents bombed an oil pipeline in southern Iraq, setting off a huge blaze and slashing daily Iraqi oil exports by about 25 percent, or 450,000 barrels per day, an official said Monday.

Insurgents have often attacked the much smaller northern pipeline to Turkey but attacks against Iraq's southern oil facilities, which account for almost 90 percent of the country's exports, have been rare.

Militants set off the bomb Saturday under the Faw oil pipeline, some 35 miles south of the main southern city of Basra, said an engineer at Iraq's Southern Oil Company, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Firefighters have been fighting the blaze since it began, said Jabber Luyaibi, director general of Iraq's Southern Oil Company.

more... http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040510-0824-iraq-oilpipeline.html

that there was plenty of oil. And that oil production was going better than projected. And that it would pay for everything. And. And. And.

Is my guess.

:eyes:

,...how much, where it's going, etc.?

mercenaries watching the pipelines..they`re doing a good job on the 100000+ they are being paid....

There are only so many hours in a day, or dollars in a billion.

Although we have been warned again and again to expect martial law following another large terrorist attack on our soil, I suspect it wouldn't take that.

A world oil crisis could also trigger savage reaction from above--with the full support of the SUV classes. We can imagine various scenarios and degrees of harm, but these premises seem pretty solid to me:

1) Our current leaders have demonstrated their lust to maximize control and wring ideological advantage out of every crisis, larding their response with all manner of pet wishes and desires (see 9/11 and reaction thereto).

2) The affluent will tolerate no interruption in their luxuries. Witness, in the midst of economic reversals, staggering tax cuts for the wealthy.

3) The Bush gang is in crisis, and collapse is a possibility. Any precipitous loss in popularity, and well... I think this gang becomes more dangerous as its grip on power becomes tenuous; hope I'm wrong.

There is more at stake than possible election of BushCo. If somebody in the Arab world succeeds in another attack on American ground, or if oil production drops really low (which Saudi Arabia is fully capable of doing if they start thinking it's in their interest) then we will hear a drumbeat for expanding this war, not getting out. Expansion of the war is the goal of PNAC. What might they do to rescue their dream?

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

KARBALA, Iraq - Insurgents blasted an oil pipeline, setting off a huge blaze and slashing Iraq (news - web sites)'s daily oil exports by about 25 percent. U.S. troops traded gunfire Monday with fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in this Shiite city south of Baghdad.

American tanks and helicopters destroyed al-Sadr's headquarters in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City in weekend clashes. U.S. officials said 35 Iraqis were killed before fighting ended just before dawn Monday.

Elsewhere, U.S. Marines entered the restive city of Fallujah on Monday for the first time since a bloody, three-week siege ended last month. The Marines, accompanied by Iraqi forces, remained in the city for about an hour and left without incident.

Three more American soldiers have died in Iraq — two from hostile fire and one in a traffic accident.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=3&u=/ap/20040510/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_7

In my twisted 'liberal' mind the title is typical of the current insanity brought to the world by the Bush Crime Family. When I heard of the blast, the first thing that entered my mind was; 1. hope no Americans got killed. 2. hope no Iraqi civilians and children got killed. 3. hope there's no terrible people/environmental damage from the chemical gases.

I guess I need to listen to Limbutt for a few years to become brainwashed like Franken's ditto head friend. The guy who says he's 'not a fish person' when questioned about the dying out of fish in the Great Lakes. These are some bunch of sick people. It shows you how good a person Al is! I couldn't be friends with people with this attitude towards God's Earth.

I wonder how 2 different journalists decide to emphasize the 'oil export' so much to both mysteriously happen to put it in the title?

AND yahoo seems to misled, at least me, with the pic posted with this story. The pic is NOT of the oil explosion. This pic is 'electricity storage plant in Baghdad' which is a different act.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040510/481/mm10505101626

helping to lower oil prices for *.