Fire briefly halts crude loading at Iraq’s Basra offshore oil export terminal

A fire at Iraq’s southern Basra offshore oil export terminal temporarily halted crude loading operations on Tuesday and injured four employees on site, according to the company.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A fire at Iraq’s southern Basra offshore oil export terminal temporarily halted crude loading operations on Tuesday and injured four employees on site, according to the company.

The fire broke out at 5:00 in the morning in the workers’ housing building, Basra Oil Company said in a statement, without mentioning the cause of the fire.

The fire, which started on one of the building’s inhabited floors, slightly injured four oil workers working on site, the company added.

The incident halted crude loading at the port for three hours, a source from the company told Reuters.

The terminal’s capacity for loading crude oil is around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd).

The oil company relies on four operational single point moorings (SPMs) for loading oil tankers, each capable of holding 850,000 bpd.

Most of Iraq’s oil is exported in Basra that accounts for over 90 percent of the country’s revenue and yet suffers from widespread inequality, poor services, and a lack of jobs.

Iraq is the second-largest oil producer with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). 

Editing by Nadia Riva