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Iraq briefly suspended crude oil loadings at its southern Basra terminal on Thursday, July 16, after a drone crashed into an oil tanker anchored there, four Iraqi oil and security sources told Reuters. The drone caused no damage or fire, and it was not immediately clear who launched it.
Loadings resumed the same day. The head of Iraq's state oil marketer SOMO, Ali Nazar, said the terminal itself was not the target. "It is not targeting Basra Oil Terminal. Its target is another place," he said, adding that loading was running at normal rates. An oil ministry spokesperson said exports were ongoing at the southern ports and that the ministry was investigating.
The struck tanker was towed outside the port, along with a second tanker that had been anchored nearby, as a precaution. A day earlier, a drone came down at Iraq's Faw port without causing damage, and operations there were not affected.
The incident lands as the war between the United States and Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer, moved about 10 million barrels through the strait in April, down from roughly 93 million barrels a month before the conflict, according to figures from its oil minister. Total exports through the southern terminals stood near 24.5 million barrels in June. Baghdad has leaned on the northern Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline through Turkiye and has explored routing crude through Syria as it works to keep exports moving.
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