Iraq's oil export pipeline to Turkey - a crucial lifeline for the economy - is still ablaze today, sending clouds of black smoke into the sky, and the US Army said it could take two weeks to repair.
"The different reports we have seen have been anywhere from 10 days to two weeks, but they still have a lot to find out about what needs to be done," an Army spokesman told a news conference when asked how long it would take to fix the line.
At the site of the blaze at Shirqaat in the deserts of northern Iraq, flames poured from the breach in the pipeline. Officials said yesterday the blaze had been extinguished, but later reported instead that it had been "contained".
"It's still burning but under control," Major Josslyn Aberle of the US 4th Infantry Division told Reuters at the American base in Tikrit, north of Baghdad. "The residual oil in the pipeline is burning up."
The pipeline started pumping oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on Wednesday for the first time since the war that toppled Saddam Hussein. But on Friday it was attacked.
Mr Paul Bremer, the US governor of Iraq, said sabotage was depriving the country of desperately needed funds.
"The irony is that Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor," he told the opening meeting of a committee set up to coordinate foreign aid for Iraq. "An event such as the explosion on the Kirkuk pipeline costs the Iraqi people $7 million a day and hurts the process of reconstruction."
Iraq had been exporting all of its oil from the south before the northern pipeline opened again. But the southern region is also facing problems. Theft of power lines has halved exports and threatens to bring sales to a standstill.