Iraq’s Basra oil export terminal to stop loading for 24 hours

Iraqi workers at the Rumaila oil refinery, near the city of Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, in this 2012 file photo. (AP)

BASRA: Iraq’s main oil export terminal, off the southern city of Basra, will stop loading operations for 24 hours, starting midnight Tuesday, because of work to install a new pipeline feeding the facility, two sources at the state-run South Oil Company said.
The terminal’s loading capacity is estimated at around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd).
Loading offshore at three single-point moorings (SPMs) connected with the Basra terminal will not be affected, they said.
OPEC’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia, Iraq exported a record 3.51 million barrels per day in December from the southern ports.