BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents attacked pipelines and an oil storage depot in three parts of Iraq (news - web sites), setting fires that blazed for hours and lost millions of gallons of oil, officials and media reported Sunday, as the country faced a critical fuel shortage.
Rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades hit storage tanks in southern Baghdad on Saturday, creating fires that burned about 2.6 million gallons of gasoline, said Issam Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.
Also Saturday, a pipeline exploded in the al-Mashahda area 15 miles north of Baghdad, in what Jihad called "an act of sabotage."
"The explosion led to the destruction of (part of) the pipeline and to the leakage of vast quantities of oil products," Jihad said.
He said he had no immediate information about another reported attack on oil pipelines in northern Iraq.
Al-Jazeera television reported Sunday that large fires were burning following attacks Saturday on four pipelines in the area between Tikrit and Beji. But an AP stringer reported seeing four fires blazing from pipelines further north, between Beji and Mosul, about 250 miles north of Baghdad.
Al-Jazeera quoted officials as saying those fires were caused by saboteurs.
The Oil Ministry introduced rationing on Thursday to overcome shortages that have created mile-long lines of cars at gas stations and waits up to 12 hours. At the same time the U.S. military began to crack down on black marketeers who sell gas for as much as $1.85 a gallon. The official price equates to 5 U.S. cents a gallon.
Multiple causes have created the shortages, including sabotage and difficulties restoring crude oil supplies from war-damaged and antiquated refineries. In addition an estimated 250,000 newly imported cars, most secondhand, that have entered the country since Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was ousted.
Iraq has the world's second-largest oil reserves, second only to neighboring Saudi Arabia. The
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