A power outage has left Iraq's largest oil refinery idle, depriving the country from nearly 200,000 barrels a day of petroleum products, an official said Wednesday, according to AP. The refinery's closure, which began Sunday, is the second major disruption this month to production in the key facility 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad in the city of Beiji. A technical fault in a production unit sparked two fires Jan. 7 in the Beiji refinery, killing an engineer and injuring 10 workers. Production resumed the next day. «The (Beiji) refinery was shut down three days ago due to a power cut,» an Oil Ministry official said. «Work will resume once a stable power supply is available,» he said. Iraq's three main oil refineries, Beiji, Shuaiba and Dora in Baghdad _ are running at roughly half their capacity, processing a total of about 350,000 bpd, compared to 700,000 before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
