The WSJ reports,"Iraq's oil minister Abdul Kareem Luaiby said Wednesday that he didn't expect violence in the country's north to spread to its oil-producing south and that the situation in Mosul wouldn't affect oil exports.
"The accident is only in the north of Iraq…the south is a very very safe area," the minister said, speaking ahead of Wednesday's meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Mr. Luaiby said that repairs on the pipeline are continuing notwithstanding the current situation in Mosul. However, he added that there was a possibility that oil from the north could be piped south through oil-product pipelines for domestic consumption and then exported from Basrah, if protecting the northern pipeline proves too difficult.Islamist insurgents overran Iraq's second-largest city on Tuesday, raising concerns about exports from the country's northern oil fields, which have already been shut in because of repeated attacks on the pipeline that runs north to Ceyhan in Turkey".
