Two workers killed in pipeline fire at Iraq’s Zubair oilfield, officials say

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BASRA,Iraq (Reuters) -At least two workers were killed in an oil pipeline fire in Iraq’s Zubair oilfield on Sunday, oilfield officials said.

There was no impact on oil flows, they said, with throughput currently at 400,000 barrels per day.

The blaze, which also seriously wounded five workers, erupted while a group of workers were conducting welding operations near the pipeline, the officials said.

Firefighters were working to extinguish the fire, which broke out on a section of the pipeline that transports crude oil from the Zubair field to nearby storage tanks.

The oil ministry said in a statement that the fire originated from a gas leak in an old pumping system at the Zubair oil storage depot, confirming that one employee of the Basra Oil Company (BOC) was killed and four others were wounded.

It added that incidents of this nature require time to be fully contained.

Some of the injured workers suffered severe burns and remain in critical condition, raising concerns that the incident could result in more fatalities, the officials said.

The fire has not impacted production operations, but it needs to be extinguished quickly to avoid a partial shutdown of some loading operations, one of the officials said.

(Reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by Tom Hogue, Aidan Lewis)