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DMEA: Militia threatens Iraqi pipeline

An Iraqi militant group with links to Iran this week made vague threats to halt any effort to establish a pipeline route linking Basra with the Red Sea.

Various versions of plans to build a 1,600-km conduit to carry crude oil from Iraq’s oil-rich Basra Governorate to the Red Sea port of Aqaba have been on the drawing board since 1982, with political, technical and commercial concerns converging to derail progress.

However, following meetings held in mid-January in Baghdad between Jordanian parliamentary speaker Ahmad Al-Safadi and his Iraqi counterpart, Muhammad Halbousi, suggested that work would soon begin on the cross-border link.

This potential progress appears to have angered the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN), which reports to Iran’s elite Quds Force, part of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Leader of HHN’s political council Ali al-Asadi was quoted by local media as saying: “Jordanians must know their battle is doomed for failure. [The Basrah-Aqaba oil pipeline] will never be. Let them try and they shall witness what happens to them and whoever collaborates with them.”

The project will be divided into two parts: the first phase includes installing a 56-inch (1,422-mm), 680-km pipeline with a capacity of 2.25mn barrels per day (bpd) from the Rumaila oilfield to Najaf, built in three phases.