Kirkuk Oil Pumping Halted since Monday

Pumping of oil along Iraqi Kurdistan's pipeline carrying Kirkuk and Kurdish crude to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been halted since Monday due to repairs necessitated by theft, Turkish officials and an industry source said.

"There has been a theft on the pipeline and repairs are required, which will take around one to two days," an official at Turkey's state pipeline operator Botas said.

"The pipeline could reopen tomorrow," the official said.

Crude flow in the pipeline recently averaged around 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) and at times rose as high as 500,000 bpd, a source familiar with the matter said.

But he expressed concern over incidents of theft.

"We have seen an increase in the number of thefts on the Turkish side of the pipeline, around Urfa province," the source said, referring to the southeastern province of Sanliurfa bordering Syria.

"That's why we have seen pumping halted fairly frequently recently," he said.

Oil exports from Iraq's Kirkuk field via Ceyhan had stopped for months last year, when the Baghdad-controlled federal pipeline came under attack by Islamic State militants.

Iraq's state oil marketer SOMO resumed exports via Ceyhan late last year through the Kurdish-built pipeline after Iraqi Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad struck a deal in December.

Under the deal, Kurds committed to export an average of 550,000 bpd from Ceyhan via SOMO in 2015, in return for the reinstatement of budget payments.

Kurdistan's regional government on Monday said it had supplied almost 97 percent of the crude oil it agreed to hand over to SOMO during that period.

Loading data from Ceyhan on Monday showed exports from northern Iraq are set to reach 400,000 bpd for the first time since the agreement was struck, from an average of 350,000 bpd over the past week and some 275,000-300,000 in February and January.

"We have been told that pumping has stopped due to a technical problem," a shipping source said, adding that several tankers were waiting offshore.

By Humeyra Pamuk and Orhan Coskun