Severe sand storms disrupt Iraq, Kuwait oil exports
I suppose the consumer will have to pay now because of blowing sand!
Severe sand storms disrupt Iraq, Kuwait oil exports
DUBAI (RTRS): Sand storms in the northern Gulf have disrupted oil exports for several days from Opec members Iraq and Kuwait, but the flow from Saudi Arabia’s largest terminal is unaffected. The Gulf is the world’s biggest oil exporting region, shipping over 13 million barrels per day of crude, more than 15 percent of global supply. Around 1.5 million bpd of exports from Iraq were expected to restart later on Tuesday after several days of disruption at Iraq’s main port of Basra, an Iraqi oil engineer and shipping agent said. Iraq pumps most of its 2 million bpd of exports through Basra. The storms had prevented seven of eight ships from docking there since Saturday. One tanker loaded and left early on Monday. The world’s seventh-largest oil exporter Kuwait restarted shipments of over 2 million bpd late on Monday after a two-day halt, a Kuwaiti industry source told Reuters.
Shipments from top oil exporter Saudi Arabia’s main offshore terminal at Ras Tanura were unaffected by the bad weather, shipping sources said. Ras Tanura is the world’s largest offshore oil facility with capacity to load between 5.5 million and 6 million bpd. “Operations are as per normal but there is bad weather,” one shipper said of Ras Tanura. Exports from the smaller Saudi terminal at Jubail were also unaffected, another shipping source said. Smaller producer Qatar, which pumps around 800,000 bpd, also saw no impact on exports, a shipper said. The storm was expected to recede, an official at the United Arab Emirates weather forecasting unit said on Tuesday. “(The bad weather) was mostly northeast of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq,” he said. “It has begun receding now as wind speeds have dropped and the dust will begin to settle.”
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/clien...=18562&ccid=12
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