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Explosions in Iraq, UK and Nigeria and more new refineries elsewhere
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
oil and energy trends
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1744-7992
pISSN - 0950-1045
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7992.2006.310106.x
Subject(s) - oil refinery , crude oil , refinery , economic shortage , opposition (politics) , upstream (networking) , prime minister , subsidy , government (linguistics) , agricultural economics , business , political science , economy , engineering , law , economics , environmental engineering , waste management , politics , telecommunications , linguistics , philosophy , petroleum engineering
This section summarizes downstream developments of the previous month. Exploration & Production are covered in 'Upstream Review'. Iraq's latest round of elections, on 15th December, returned mainly Shi'ite parties, to protests from Sunnis and some secular parties. The country continued to suffer from high levels of violence. Oil installations were bombed, and road‐tanker drivers were attacked in what was clearly a move designed to stop the delivery of refined products to Baghdad. The oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al‐Ulum, resigned in protest against a government decision to increase Iraq's heavily subsidized fuel prices. He has been temporarily replaced by the Deputy Prime Minister, Ahmad Chalabi. Opposition to the price rises led to a 10‐day strike at Iraq's main refinery at Baiji. Operations continued to be adversely affected after the strike because of sabotage to the 200,000 bpd pipeline bringing crude oil to Baiji from Kirkuk. Sabotage to a pipeline serving the Daura refinery cut production there, and severe gasoline shortages were reported across the Baghdad region. The export pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan was reopened after being idle for most of 2005, but throughputs are nowhere near capacity levels. Exports of crude oil from Basrah were disrupted by power cuts and bad weather.