BAGHDAD: Sabotage to oil infrastructure and lost export revenues cost Iraq $6.25 billion in 2005, the Oil Ministry's spokesman said yesterday.
Assem Jihad said there were 186 attacks on Iraqi oil installations last year, during which insurgents killed 47 oil engineers, technicians and workers and about 100 police protecting pipelines and other oil-related facilities.
Damage to crude export pipelines and subsequent lost revenues cost $2.71bn, while losses from destroyed domestic pipelines carrying oil products and lost products reached $3.1bn, Jihad told Dow Jones Newswires.
Damages to oil wells reached $400 million and pipelines carrying crude oil to refineries was about $12m.
Most of the sabotage took place in the northern oil installations, preventing Iraq from exporting around 400,000 barrels a day from its northern oil fields via the Turkish port of Ceyhan, Jihad said.
Iraq is currently producing around 2m barrels per day from its southern and northern oil fields, down by about 800,000 barrels compared with levels before the 2003 US-led invasion.
Iraq's crude oil exports - almost all of which are now from the south - run at around 1.4m barrels per day, also about 800,000 down compared with prewar levels.
Insurgents routinely target Iraq's oil infrastructure in a bid to disrupt the country's postwar reconstruction.