Oil export halted from Iraq's Kirkuk oil field as Kurdish forces seize pumping station

The outflow of oil from Iraq's Kirkuk oil field stopped Thursday after Kurdish forces entered a Baghdad government-owned pumping station near the city of Kirkuk and prevented workers from pumping oil, an Iraqi oil official told Xinhua.

The incident took place at 7:50 a.m. (0450 GMT) when a security force said to be affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which Iraqi President Fuad Masoum is one of its leading figures, entered a pumping station near the village of Yayji west of Kirkuk, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Kirkuk is located some 250 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Workers of the state-run North Oil Company (NOC) were ordered shut down the pumping station and leave the site, the official said, adding that the station pumps oil extracted from Kirkuk oil fields to be exported through the pipeline that cross the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, heading north to Turkey, and then to its port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

"It is not yet known what the reason behind the action of Kurdish force was. We are waiting for instructions from the (Baghdad) Ministry of Oil," he said without elaborating.

Most of Iraq's crude oil is exported through southern terminals in Basra, with the remaining sent through the northern pipeline to Ceyhan port in Turkey.

The oil-rich Kirkuk province is part of the disputed areas claimed by the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans. The Kurds want to incorporate the areas on the edge of their Kurdistan region, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government. Endit