ABOT and KAAOT
Al Basrah Oil Terminal and Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal
Situated at the end of Iraq's Basra pipeline, we floated around these two offshore oil terminals for several weeks, as part of a group of ships protecting the oil terminals from terrorist attack. Just a few weeks before we had arrived, a group of boats had attempted to run the blockade to blow up the terminals, so it was not an empty threat. Combined, they represent a significant part of the Iraqi economy, and pump out about 2% of the world's daily oil output:
ABOT: 1.5m bpd
KAAOT: 0.6m bpd
At least while we were there, the Iraqis were underselling their competition by about $3 a barrel, encouraging oil companies to buy oil from Iraq. The terminals stay full of ships, as a result.
ABOT can pump 90,000 barrels per hour, filling 2 ships at a time (45k per ship). It takes at least 2 days to fill each oil tanker. Each ship leaves with about 2m barrels of oil when full, worth about $100m at 2004 crude oil prices.
I had the privelege of touring ABOT, which was pretty well fortified. Some of its defenders had taken to calling it the "ABOT Mariott," a sarcastic, yet funny reference to the lack of creature comforts one could expect on this lonely outpost.
