The Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline may be soon back in operation after Turkey announced it killed 114 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the course of the 20-day operation and drove them out of the town of Idil in Sirnak province late on Tuesday. A curfew remains in place there. Turkey said that the PKK had bombed that pipeline, which runs through the area, on February 25. "The operation in Idil has been completed last night: this is good news for the pipeline as well," a Turkish energy official told Reuters on Wednesday. "Turkish security forces are trying to clean the area from PKK; and they did what was targeted. Turkey will raise some security measures for the pipeline." "The explosion on the 25th has apparently caused damage in both of the pipeline," said a shipping source also quoted by Reuters, "meaning by pass is no more an option and at the moment the teams are continuing their repair work, we have been told. They are saying it would take at least another week as the mine sweeping work is far from being completed." The Kurdistan Region relies heavily on oil revenues to pay its over-sized public sector. Having this pipeline out of action puts further strain on its already beleaguered economy which has been hurt by the war against Islamic State (ISIS) and the worldwide fall in the price of oil. The pipeline hasn't been exporting oil for almost three weeks now. Making this outage one of the longest in the last two turbulent years.
