IRAQ : Oil Begins Flowing in Test of Pipeline

Oil began flowing into the pipeline that will transport Iraq’s first crude exports in nearly six years under an oil-for-food deal with the United Nations. Oil Minister Amir Mohammed Rashid told a Baghdad news conference that Iraq is eager to resume sales, halted under sanctions imposed by the U.N. after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The pipeline procedure will take three to five days and is aimed at testing and restoring the pressure inside the 620-mile pipeline that runs from Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish terminus of Ceyhan, near the Mediterranean Sea. The oil will not be released from the pipeline until U.N. monitors are in place.