The Khor Mor gas field in Kurdistan, one of the biggest gas fields in Iraq’s semi-autonomous region, has been shut down after a rocket attack hit a storage tank and caused a fire, the joint field operator, UAE-based firm Dana Gas, said on Thursday.
Dana Gas, which operates the Khor Mor field under a consortium with Crescent Petroleum, OMV, MOL, and RWE, said that a liquid storage tank at the Khor Mor facility was struck by a rocket attack.
Footage from the strike shows a major fire at one of the condensate tanks:
An engineer on the ground told Oilprice.com: ”The worst attack we’ve seen — two years of work gone in a second. The new condensate tank and export units hit. We finished it just two months ago. Thankfully, zero casualties, zero injuries.”
Production has been shut down to extinguish the fire and conduct a situation assessment, Dana Gas said, adding that there were no injuries to personnel.
The rocket attack is the most serious at a field in Kurdistan since three days of drone strikes at oilfields in the semi-autonomous region shut in a large part of the output in the middle of July.
The rocket attack has not affected Kurdistan’s oil production and exports, which resumed at the end of September.
But the Khor Mor gas field supplies gas for domestic electricity generation, which is in precarious state even without sudden halts to gas output.
The attack at Khor Mor has led to blackouts in the Kurdistan region, Aziz Ahmad, deputy Chief of Staff to Kurdistan’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, said in a post on X condemning the attack.
“The usual terrorists on the federal government’s payroll have once again attacked our critical Khor Mor gas field, leading to blackouts in neighbourhoods across the Kurdistan Region,” Ahmad said, possibly referring to Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
“Electricity exports to the rest of Iraq — roughly 10% of the country’s entire generation — have also flatlined,” the official added.
“How many attacks must happen before the US government simply allows the KRG to purchase kinetic anti-drone equipment for us to defend our skies and critical infrastructure? The Iraqi government isn’t interested.”
By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com
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