----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 7:10
PM
Subject: [PEN-L] Iraqi oil again
www.nytimes.com <http://www.nytimes.com>
Widespread Looting Leaves Iraq's Oil Industry in Ruins
By NEELA
BANERJEE&&BASRA, Iraq, June 6 Standing under the merciless sun outside
his office, surrounded by employees shouting angrily about pay, Jabbar Ali
al-Leaby, the director general of the South Oil Company, lost the little
patience he had left.
"Be satisfied with what you
got," he told the men. "Do you know what I went through to get even this money
for you?"
It was only three hours into the
workday, but Mr. Leaby's frustrations started, as they do every morning, when
he arrived around 8 to the lone refurbished office in a complex of buildings
so thoroughly ransacked that birds dart through the upper stories. Employees
of South Oil, Iraq's leading oil producer before the war, are now idle because
looting has brought most of the company to a standstill.
"The other day, there was
looting and sabotage at the North Rumaila field," Mr. Leaby said. "The day
before that, at the Zubayr field. For three months, I've been talking,
talking, talking about this, and I'm sick of it."
This is now the state of the
Iraqi oil industry, custodian of the world's third largest oil reserves an
estimated 112 billion barrels and the repository of hope for the United
States-led alliance and the Iraqi people themselves. Money from oil, the Bush
administration has said repeatedly, will drive Iraq's economic revival, which
in turn will foster the country's political stability. Many Iraqis
agree.
Yet from the vast Kirkuk oil
field in the north to the patchwork of rich southern fields around Basra,
Iraq's oil industry, once among the best-run and most smartly equipped in the
world, is in tatters.
Looting, sabotage and the
continued lack of security at oil facilities are the most recent problems the
industry and its American overseers must address in order to get petroleum
flowing again, especially for export.
Some Iraqis believe that the
looting is deliberate sabotage by people still loyal to the Baath Party rule
of Saddam Hussein. Whoever is behind the pilfering and destruction, they have
compounded the problems accumulated over 12 years of United Nations sanctions.
And the expertise needed to get the oil flowing again often resides with
oilmen now tainted by their past association with Mr. Hussein.
The interim oil minister, Thamir
Ghadhban, and his American advisers are trying to purge the industry of senior
Baathists. Yet neither the Americans nor the new minister have proposed a new
structure for the industry, which might make it easier to argue that new
people are needed. For now, they are working the old state-run model under
which the ministry oversees the two companies Northern Oil and South Oil and
other agencies in charge of exploration, pipelines and other equipment and
exports.
"The sector itself is in poor
shape after years of sanctions, and the effects will take time and money to
reverse," said Raad Alkadiri, a specialist on Iraqi oil from PFC Energy, a
Washington consulting firm, who recently visited Iraq.
Security
Army of Looters Like Crawling
Ants
The Oil Ministry, supported by
the Americans, has set an aggressive schedule for the industry's revival. By
the end of the year, Mr. Ghadhban has said, Iraq should be pumping about three
million barrels a day, which would slightly exceed its prewar
output.
Over the next two weeks alone,
daily production should almost double to 1.4 million barrels a day, Mr.
Ghadhban said in a recent interview, with one million barrels a day going to
exports. Most industry experts say that is too optimistic, and that overall
production is likely to total at best one million barrels a day by the end of
this month.
etc.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
