Rebel attacks shut down two Colombian oil pipelines Sep 26, 2000 10:33 AM ET

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reuters

BOGOTA, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Two key Colombian crude export pipelines have been shut down since the weekend after the latest strikes in a crippling wave of sabotage attacks by Marxist rebels, state oil company Ecopetrol said Tuesday.

A company spokesman said the 230,000 barrel-per-day capacity Cano Limon pipeline, the country's second-largest, had been closed since Friday afternoon following a bomb attack 31 miles (51) west of the Cano Limon field operated by Occidental Petroleum Corp .

The bomb-damaged section of the 485-mile (780 km) pipeline was repaired shortly before dawn Sunday. But it was blown up again, before it had resumed pumping operations, in a rebel dominated area 108 miles (175 km) west of the Cano Limon field, the Ecopetrol spokesman said.

He said repair work on the section ruptured Sunday had not yet been able to get under way, as of early Tuesday morning, because the military was still securing the area where the blast occurred.

With the back-to-back attacks Friday and Sunday, the Cano Limon pipeline has now been bombed at least 65 times this year and looks almost certain to break last year's record total of 79 attacks.

The above-ground pipeline, which carries crude from the 105,000 bpd Cano Limon field to the Caribbean lifting terminal of Covenas, opened in the mid-1980s and has long been a favourite target of guerrillas opposed to what they see as excessive foreign involvement in Colombia's oil industry.

Mines and Energy Minister Carlos Caballero told Reuters in an interview late last week that this year's attacks on the Cano Limon tube had spilled more than 176,000 barrels of crude into jungle and savanna surrounding the pipeline, inflicting serious ecological damage.

http://www.localbusiness.com/Story/0,1118,NOCITY_410725,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 26, 2000