Iraqi oil exports through the northern pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan are running at around 550,000 barrels a day after a weekend interruption, a Middle East shipping agent told Dow Jones Newswires Monday.

"They stopped and then resumed the flow," the shipping agent said. "It has been flowing now at 23,000 barrels an hour."

Earlier, Agence France-Presse reported the flow of oil exports was resumed through an undamaged pipeline after it was cut by an explosion on part of the pipeline inside Turkey, Iraq's northern neighbor.

The blast occurred at about [1820 GMT] Friday around 180 kilometers from the Iraqi-Turkish border, inside Turkey," AFP quoted an Iraqi official from the state North Oil Co. as saying.

"I really don't know why the flow was stopped and then resumed...they said there was a problem and they solved it," the shipping agent told Dow Jones.

However, AFP quoted the Iraqi official as saying: "The Turkish side is working on repairing the damage, but we are using a second pipeline."

Iraq exported an average of 2.106 million barrels a day in January, well short of a planned target of 2.6 million barrels a day for 2012.

The northern export pipeline which mainly carries Kirkuk crude oil to Europe has been the target of militant attacks over the last few years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Almost every a month or two the pipeline is attacked. Most of the attacks against the pipeline are carried inside Iraq .
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