Terminal end for Iron Duke in the Gulf

AFTER eight years the Navy’s mission to safeguard Iraq’s two oil platforms is all but over after HMS Iron Duke completed the final patrol of the terminals.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Britain’s frigate fleet has been committed almost round-the-clock, patrolling the waters around the Khawr Al Amaya and Al Basra Oil Terminals – known throughout the Fleet as KAAOT and ABOT.

The two platforms deliver millions of barrels of black gold daily from Iraq’s oil fields to waiting tankers – generating around 80 per cent of the country’s income in the process.

Given their value the platforms, off the Al Faw peninsula at the tip of the Gulf, need protecting, performed principally by RN, US and Australian forces and, increasingly, Iraqi sailors and marines.

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