Iraq restarts north oil exports to Turkey

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iraq has restarted pumping Kirkuk crude exports through its northern pipeline to Turkey after a 10-day halt, a shipping source said on Wednesday.

Sabotage attacks have kept the pipeline from the Kirkuk oilfields mostly idle since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The line sustained damage in a bomb attack on September 19, but sporadic shipments have continued.

"The flow has restarted," a shipper said. He did not know at what rate the oil was flowing from Iraq, nor how much more Iraq had pumped into storage tanks at the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan.

Before the restart, oil in storage stood at around 2.6 million barrels, the shipper said.

Iraq issued a sell tender on Thursday to sell 5 million barrels from Ceyhan to be loaded in 1 million or 2 million barrel lots by October 22.

It sold 2.5 million barrels in the previous tender to be loaded by October 5.

The pipeline is Iraq's secondary export route. When the line is down, the country relies on its main terminal in the south at Basra for exports of about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd).