LONDON - Crude oil flows through the Iraqi Kurdish pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan are averaging around 240,000 barrels per day (bpd), a shipping source said on Thursday.
Flows were briefly switched off in the early hours of Wednesday before returning to around 225,000 bpd in the afternoon.
The level has been fluctuating at around 10,000 barrels per hour. It dipped on Thursday morning to just over 8,000 barrels per hour after hitting a high of around 12,000 barrels per hour.
A technical disruption at 6 pumping stations for the Bai Hassan and Avana oilfields has knocked out about 350,000 bpd of production, two Iraqi oil officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Iraqi government forces took the fields back from Kurdish peshmerga this week but a gap between incoming and outgoing personnel caused the output disruption.
Prior to the outage, flows through the pipeline were typically close to 600,000 bpd. According to the source, around 440,000 barrels were available for loading.
(Reporting by Julia Payne; editing by Jason Neely) ((julia.payne@thomsonreuters.com ; +44 207 542 1836))
