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Fuel Shortages Frustrate Iraqi Kurds
6.4.2006
By Fazl Najeeb in Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq |
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Angry motorists suspect
corrupt officials of deliberately causing supply
problems.
For Kamaran Mohammed, nothing is more tiring than
the hours he wastes in the queue for the fuel
station.
Mohammed, a 29-year-old civil servant, usually kills
time making friends with others waiting in the
agonisingly long line of motorists. Such queues are
all too common in Sulaimaniyah and can stretch for
up to two kilometres.
As they wait, Mohammed says he and the other drivers
mostly complain about politics and corruption.
"We talk about the injustice in this country and how
the officials get rich on the backs of people," said
Mohammed.
Mohammed said fuel on the black market is readily
available but too expensive. Several times, he said,
he waited for nearly half a day, only for the fuel
station to run out of petrol. Once, after a ten-hour
wait, he and some other motorists decided to just to
stay overnight in their cars.
The next morning, continued Mohammed, some drivers
drove to the front of the queue, but the police
turned up and ordered them to get back into line -
an increasingly common scene at gas stations in this
northern Kurdish city.
Although Iraq is believed to have the second-largest
oil reserves in the world, the country suffers from
an acute fuel shortage. Iraq's decrepit refineries,
corruption and poor security are hindering the
country's ability to produce and refine oil, forcing
Iraqis to wait in long gas lines or rely on the
black market.
A US Senate report last year estimated that Iraq
loses 600 million dollars a month in oil export
revenue and more on the cost of repairs to damaged
infrastructure.
According to a recent Reuters report, the country's
oil exports fell to 1.1 million barrels a day in
December, the lowest level since before the US-led
invasion in 2003.
Most experts consider sabotage the greatest threat
to Iraqi production, which puts Sulaimaniyah in an
advantageous position - as it is the most secure
region in Iraq and is believed to have substantial
oil wealth. Yet the fuel lines in this province are
often longer than those in Baghdad.
According to Ahmed Arif, a Sulaimaniyah government
spokesman on oil affairs, the province requires one
million litres of fuel a day, but the authorities in
Baghdad only provide a fifth of its needs.
Demand for fuel has spiralled due to growing car
ownership since the lifting of economic sanctions in
2003 and the widespread use of electricity
generators.
This demand has created a thriving black market for
oil products from neighbouring Iran: men sit in the
back of pick-up trucks with plastic fuel canisters
alongside every major road in Sulaimaniyah.
The authorities are planning to address the dire
petrol-supply situation by building two new oil
refineries some 20 kilometres south of Sularimaniyah.
These are expected produce 20,000 barrels of oil a
day by the end of the year, according Kamal Taha,
head of the Sulaimaniyah’s one refinery, who
believes the new facilities will solve 90 per cent
of the shortage problem.
In the meantime, the Kurdish authorities are trying
to ease the difficulties people are facing by
apparently turning a blind eye to the black market
and allowing private petrol stations to import fuel.
Few here believe the local authorities’ claims that
the supply problems stem from Baghdad’s alleged
neglect of the region. Instead, there’s a suspicion
that some corrupt local officials control the
private pumps and the black market, supplying both
with fuel earmarked for official petrol stations.
"After the [Kurdish independence] uprising in 1991,
people have not spent a day without the fuel
problem, and it is because of the officials in [both
the main] parties," said Omed Kamal a 28-year-old
taxi driver, referring to the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "They
make a business out of it."
Fazl Najeeb is an IWPR trainee journalist based
in Sulaimaniyah and Erbil.
www.iwpr.net
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