Oil leak from Iraq-Turkey pipeline shuts Nineveh water plants

NINEVEH — Oil is still leaking into the Tigris River from a fault in the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline near Zummar, northwest of Mosul, and water pumping across Nineveh governorate will stay halted until it is fixed, the governorate’s water director said Saturday.

Muayad Sadiq, director of the Nineveh Water Directorate, told the state-run Iraqi News Agency that oil leaks and slicks were continuing in the river because of seepage or a fault in the line, which runs past the Zummar area close to the Tigris.

“Treating the leak is a matter for the Oil Ministry,” Sadiq said. He said the directorate had stopped pumping water until the leak is dealt with.

Zummar is a subdistrict on the Tigris about 60 kilometers northwest of Mosul, upstream of the city.

The directorate shut all its water plants in the governorate as a precaution on Friday evening after oil slicks appeared in the Tigris. A statement it sent to 964media said the plants would stay off until the authorities dealt with the problem, and did not say where the oil came from.

“The safety and health of citizens are our first responsibility, and operations will not resume until the safety of the water has been confirmed,” the statement said.

Neither statement said how many residents were affected or when supplies would resume. There was no immediate comment from the Oil Ministry.

The Iraq-Turkey pipeline carries crude from Kirkuk toward Turkey’s Ceyhan port. In March, Hayan Abdul Ghani, then oil minister, said crews were in the final stage of repairing the pipeline that links Kirkuk’s fields to the Iraq-Turkey line, so crude could be pumped to Turkey without passing through the Kurdistan Region. Kirkuk crude exports to Ceyhan resumed through the Kurdistan Region’s pipeline on March 18.

Oil has reached the Tigris before. In April, the Water Resources Ministry said floodwater had carried oil from a leak between Salah al-Din and Kirkuk into the river at Baiji. Water supplies between Baiji and the Samarra Barrage were suspended for 10 hours before the spill was contained.