Militants whose bombs have shut Iraq’s main northern oil export pipeline for 40 days are preventing repairs, threatening to extend an outage that is already the longest since the days of sanctions in the 1990s. Targeting the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline where it crosses a stretch of desert known as Ain al-Jahash, or Donkey Springs, the saboteurs – described as Islamists by Iraqi officials – have set several more bombs since a first blast halted oil on March 2. Significantly for an Iraqi government hoping for a big rise in exports this year – and long used to brief halts on the route to the Mediterranean – gunmen have also massacred repair crews, prompting oil executives in Mosul to question optimism in Baghdad that the pipeline should be back in action next week. “We have decided to stop all repair operations in Ain al-Jahash until we are sure our crews won’t […]