Bad weather at southern export terminals and an explosion at an export pipeline in the north hit Iraq 's crude oil exports in January, people familiar with the State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, said Sunday.

Crude exports in January totaled 2.359 million barrels a day, compared with 2.348 million barrels a day in December, according to people familiar with the situation. Iraq 's oil exports were running at around 2.5 million to 2.6 million barrels a day most of last year.

The country exported 2.095 million barrels a day from its southern oil fields in January, compared with 2.023 million barrels a day in December, they said. Some 253,000 barrels a day were exported from northern oil fields to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in January, compared with 314,000 barrels a day in the previous month. Another 11,000 barrels a day were shipped by trucks to Jordan in January, the people said.

Northern oil exports also fell in January because the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq has suspended their oil exports of nearly 90,000 barrels a day via the Baghdad-controlled northern export pipeline.

Ashti Hawrami, minister of natural resources for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said last week that Kurdistan was planning to restart exports of crude oil and condensate. He said export volumes would amount to around 20,000 barrels a day of crude oil and 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day of condensate.

Most of the crude from Kurdistan is exported by the U.K.-Turkish firm Genel Energy PLC (GENL.LN). Baghdad has threatened legal action against the Kurdish Regional Government for sending Iraqi oil to Turkey , a move the central government considers illegal.

Kurdistan has suspended exports via the Baghdad-controlled pipeline due to unpaid payments to Kurdish production companies totaling 350 billion Iraqi dinars ($295.18 million). The central government withheld the payments because the northern region had failed to export the agreed amount of oil, an official in Baghdad said last month.
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