Oil Flow Resumes From Iraq Pipeline, U.N. Officials Say

A key pipeline that Iraq said was damaged by a U.S. airstrike has resumed pumping oil to Turkey, U.N. officials said Wednesday.

U.N. officials had expressed “deep concern” about the damage Sunday to the pipeline’s communications centers and its impact on the oil-for-food program, which allows Baghdad to sell limited amounts of oil to buy food and medicine for Iraqis, who are under U.N. sanctions.

Low oil prices and the dilapidated state of Iraq’s oil industry have resulted in a $900-million shortfall in what the United Nations needs to run the program.

Earlier Wednesday, the program’s leader, Benon Sevan, told the Security Council that if the pipeline resumed functioning within a day, there would be only “minimal delays” in exporting oil out of the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

There had been enough oil stored at the port--2.38 million barrels--to keep ships carrying their normal loads, he said.

The United Nations didn’t say how Iraqi engineers repaired the pipeline. But Sevan said that monitors from the Dutch firm Saybolt, which monitors the flow of oil into Turkey, observed Iraqi technicians trying to restore the damaged communications links.

Iraq has been barred from exporting oil freely since U.N. sanctions were imposed in 1990 to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait.