OTTOMAN DIGNITY?

Iraq exports first oil since war (ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 22, 2003)

Iraq returned to the world oil market Sunday, exporting its first crude oil since the U.S.-led invasion in a crucial step that will bring in revenue vital to rebuilding the country.

The export of crude from Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserves in the world, is a major step for the country, which is in desperate need of funding to repair battered infrastructure--including its oil facilities--and rebuild an economy devastated by more than 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions.

Turkish workers began loading 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude onto the Turkish tanker Ottoman Dignity in a ceremony attended by senior Iraqi, U.S. and Turkish oil officials at this Mediterranean oil terminal, at the end of a twin pipeline running from Iraq's northern oil fields.

The Ottoman Dignity will carry the oil to a Turkish refinery on the Aegean coast.

"This will mark the beginning of a new era and beginning of normalization," Mehmet Takiyuddin Bilgic, head of Turkey's pipeline company BOTAS, told The Associated Press.

The money from the sale will go to a U.S.-controlled fund for rebuilding efforts.

Some 8 million barrels of oil have been stored in southern Turkey since before the U.S.-led war began. Iraqi officials had said that the country could begin pumping fresh oil to Turkey as early as Sunday. But other Iraqi oil officials in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, said Sunday that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is still not ready to begin carrying crude.

Well, as long as it is all about the oil, we may as well get it pumping. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 10:35 AM