Turkey’s Ceyhan oil port disrupted by weather as earthquake damage assessed

Adverse upwind conditions are obstructing loading operations astatine Turkey's Ceyhan port, wherever the interaction of Monday's immense duplicate earthquakes is inactive being assessed, according to lipid traders and shipping sources.

Operations were interrupted astatine the Ceyhan lipid larboard — a captious hub for the discharge of crude lipid and lipid products, on with the loading of Azeri crude and a watercourse of Iraqi crude lipid — connected Monday, pursuing 2 earthquakes that devastated Turkey and Syria, leaving implicit 5,000 dead. Turkey has declared a three-month authorities of emergency astatine regions struck by the earthquakes.

Damage to the larboard is inactive being determined. Seasonally mediocre upwind conditions are present impeding loadings, according to aggregate shipping and commercialized sources who spoke connected information of anonymity.

Ceyhan larboard serves state-owned refiner Tupras and Azerbaijani Socar's Turkey-based Star refinery. It besides exports volumes of 2 crude lipid streams — the Azeri crude lipid delivered done the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) consortium's pipeline, and the Iraqi Kirkuk blend crude lipid transferred done the abstracted Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. Loadings of the 2 crude lipid terminals are undertaken from 2 antithetic points wrong Ceyhan port, with BTC crude lipid leaving the BTC terminal, portion the Kirkuk blend sails from the Botas terminal.

Lawk Ghafuri, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government, told CNBC that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that transits Iraqi Kirkuk blend crude lipid for seaborne export into the Mediterranean had not restarted flows arsenic of Tuesday morning, aft interrupting deliveries connected Monday.

Ghafuri added that the pipeline has not sustained harm arsenic a effect of the earthquakes. An lipid commercialized root acquainted with KRG operations told CNBC that the pipeline could apt statesman flows aboriginal Tuesday. 

An lipid tanker vessel is awaiting to berth to load Kirkuk blend crude.

Three commercialized sources, who preferred to stay anonymous arsenic they are not allowed to speech publically connected the issue, estimated that the BTC terminal could spot a longer restart, arsenic section harm is inactive being assessed.

One commercialized root and a shipping root pointed to imaginable interaction connected a tank, though it was not instantly wide if harm was sustained.

The Botas International company, which operates the BTC pipeline conception that traverses Turkish territory, said connected Monday that nary harm was detected connected the crude pipeline astatine the time, according to a Google translation.

Azeri crude authorities shaper Socar did not instantly respond to a CNBC petition for comment.

The front-month Ice Brent declaration with April transportation was trading astatine $82.25/bl astatine 15:54 GMT, up by $1.26/bl from the erstwhile adjacent price. The Nymex WTI declaration with March expiry was astatine $75.66/bl, higher by $1.55/bl from the Monday settlement.