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Tribes Sabotage Kirkuk Pipelines
7.9.2007
By IWPR reporters in Kirkuk (ICR No)
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Local tribes who reap massive profits from stolen
oil are likely to obstruct the authorities’ attempts
to protect pipelines.
September 7, 2007 Kirkuk,
Kurdistan region border with (Iraq)
Masked men infiltrate the village of al-Milih, 75
kilometres west of Kirkuk, and approach an oil
pipeline that passes nearby. Under cover of
darkness, they steal oil from an opening they
drilled into the pipeline weeks earlier.
Over a period of weeks, this scene is repeated
nightly.
Despite the presence of special oil ministry units,
pipelines around Kirkuk are destroyed and hundreds
of tonnes of oil stolen every day by tribe members
from surrounding villages, such as al-Milih, Wadi
Zghetun, al-Muradiyya, al-Saduniyya, al-Kanaina and
al-Safra.
The “oil protection units” were deployed to guard
the pipelines after the government cancelled
previous failed agreements with tribal forces to
protect them. But in spite of this, oil is stolen
from pipelines stretching from the al-Riyadh
sub-district, 55 km west of Kirkuk, to the al-Fatha
area 90 km to the west.
Tribal sheikhs who profit from the stolen oil are
likely to obstruct new measures planned by local
authorities, including a special protection force,
to stop the sabotage of the pipelines. Locals
employed to protect the pipes are often from the
same groups as those who are stealing the oil.
Ever since a British-controlled company discovered
oil in Kirkuk in 1927, the fate of the city has been
tied to black gold.
A thirst for oil drove Saddam’s Baath party to
assert control over Kirkuk, driving out thousands of
Kurds and replacing them with Arabs. Before the fall
of the old regime, the fields around Kirkuk produced
nearly 850,000 barrels per day, more than 30 per
cent of Iraq's total production at the time.
In the first few years after the fall of former
Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government, Sunni
insurgents – many of whom as former soldiers had
guarded oil routes under the old regime – blew up
the pipelines to wreak havoc.
Since then, insurgents have realised that stealing
oil is also damaging, and is far more profitable
than pure destruction.
Today, Kirkuk’s oil wealth is evaporating.
Qais al-Mifraji, a 34-year-old farmer in the village
of al-Safra, 63 km west of Kirkuk, describes how the
pipelines are destroyed.
"The insurgents usually come at night and plant a
bomb to detonate the export pipeline," he said. "But
if they want to steal, they just break it and fill
their tankers. No one can stop them."
The riddled pipes partially explain why four years
after the US invasion, Iraq has not been able to
match its pre-war crude production level of 2.5
million barrels a day. In 2006, production averaged
2.1 million barrels per day, mostly from oil fields
near Basra in the south, which have not suffered the
non-stop sabotage taking place in the north.
Kirkuk now produces just 180,000 barrels a day. It
could produce at least 400,000 more a day which, at
current market prices, would net Iraq seven billion
US dollars in revenue per year.
Over the second half of last year, one stretch of
pipeline connecting Kirkuk with the Turkish
Mediterranean port of Ceyhan - the main outlet for
Iraq's northern oil exports - pumped oil for only 43
days. The rest of the time, the pipeline lay idle,
leaking crude through dozens of holes drilled along
its 320-km run through the Iraqi desert.
Another pipeline has been tapped into 39 times so
far this year, according to the state-owned Northern
Oil Company, NOC, which operates the Kirkuk field.
Qadir Omer Rahman, director of the oil products
distribution department in Kirkuk, said that the
80km-long pipeline from Kirkuk to the refinery in
Bayji suffered many attacks.
"Those who protect and guard the oil pipelines are
recruited from the people of the villages through
which the pipelines pass," he said. "They are the
ones committing these acts of terror and smuggling,
with the help of other groups."
Unemployment and poor living conditions spurred Ayad
Hamid al-Ubaidi from Hawdh village, who is in his
thirties, to join the gangs who target pipelines and
steal oil.
"There is no one who can give us our rights," he
said. "We have to use our own hands to obtain our
rights."
Rahman estimated that three million litres of oil
are lost every month because of sabotage, which he
said severely affects the provision of petroleum
products to Kirkuk and the Kurdistan region's three
northern governorates.
Each stage of oil production in the north is
hampered by criminal activity.
It is not only the oil and its products which are
stolen by outsiders. Pumps, transformers, generators
and other valuable machinery and spare parts are
frequently looted.
Oil company workers are coming increasingly under
fire from militias. Pipeline repair crews have been
shot at and hit by roadside bombs. Sunni insurgents
have been dropping leaflets in Kirkuk warning all
government employees, including oil company workers,
to quit or to face death.
Last summer, Adi al-Qazaz, then NOC’s
director-general, went to Baghdad to visit the oil
ministry. After his meeting, he was kidnapped by
gunmen on the street, never to be seen again.
While some NOC employees are threatened, others are
suspected of cooperating in stealing both crude and
refined oil. Truck drivers, as well as managers of
fuel stations, are taking their share of the illegal
business, draining supplies for Iraqi citizens who
struggle to find cooking oil and fuel.
A source in the NOC, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said that there is a mafia-like group
operating inside the company which smuggles large
amounts of oil through pipelines, in cooperation
with individuals inside the company.
"When an explosion occurs in a pipeline and oil
leaks from it, the people in charge neglect it,
leaving the leak for several days until a large
amount of oil has been taken from it," he said.
Much of the smuggled crude oil is sold to merchants
in Erbil through local brokers. They meet to do
their deals in a restaurant in the sub-district of
al-Gwer, 40 km west of Erbil, according to Ahmed al-Jobouri,
an oil tanker driver.
At small domestic refineries, the crude is
transformed into refined fuel and then sold on the
black market. Some will then be smuggled across the
border.
According to the NOC source, "the revenue from oil
smuggled into Turkey is used to support the Turkoman
Front in Iraq, and revenue from oil smuggled to
Syria is used to support the insurgent groups in
Iraq".
Fuel is heavily subsidised in Iraq. Petrol stations
receive limited supplies and citizens are given
vouchers entitling them to buy a certain amount each
week at the official low price. But because there is
not enough subsidised fuel, most Iraqis end up
buying oil products on the black market.
A source in the Bayji refinery near Kirkuk, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, told IWPR reporters
that some officials from the General Company for Oil
Products, which is in charge of issuing paperwork
for the subsidies, sells authentic as well as false
receipts to merchants.
The stolen fuel is then smuggled and sold on the
black market, either inside Iraq or across the
border in Syria or Turkey.
There is also small-scale smuggling. Salah Ali, who
has been working as a tanker driver for six months,
said receipts are issued at the Bayji refinery for
36,000 litres per tanker, which is their official
load.
But they are then filled to their full capacity of
40,000 litres, and the additional 4,000 litres are
sold on the black market for five times the price of
regular fuel.
Similar activities go on at the smaller refinery in
Kirkuk, said Irfan Kirkukli, the deputy chief of
security on the city council.
"Several trucks carrying oil products smuggled from
Kirkuk have been seized," he said. "Vehicles have
been caught smuggling 160 canisters of cooking gas
from Kirkuk to Erbil, for example."
Some petrol station owners, he said, sell their
share of state-subsidised fuel to black market
dealers.
"Many such cases have occurred in Kirkuk and legal
action was taken against [the culprits]," he said.
"The filling stations weren't given [further]
allotments and their owners were fined."
To protect the pipelines and prevent illegal
smuggling of fuel, several measures are to be
implemented. Kirkukli said a special protection
force to guard the pipelines will be formed,
consisting of members of the Iraqi army, oil
protection forces and the tribes from the areas
where the pipelines pass through.
Officials in charge of particular pipeline sectors
will have to pay fines if their stretches are
damaged or oil is stolen. Kirkukli also said that
funds have been allocated to support oil
infrastructure and to build observation towers along
the pipelines in western and southern Kirkuk.
Sami Amin Othman, the Kurdish chief of the oil
protection force in Kirkuk, has recently hired 290
new security guards whom he plans to deploy along
the pipelines.
This, however, has already created unrest among the
local Sunni Arab chiefs in the area. They seem to be
afraid of losing power because the new guards will
be paid directly by the government and not
contracted through them.
Because the people hired to protect the pipelines
are often from the same groups that sabotage the
pipes, and tribal bonds are often stronger than
national loyalty, the illegal drilling is expected
to continue.
Sheikh Ziyad Hasan, who formerly served as a
contractor protecting the pipelines, confirms that
people from the area sabotage the pipelines and
profit from the oil. Many locals, he said, lack the
motivation to prevent thefts.
"They believe that this oil serves the Americans and
the new government, and that it does not benefit the
people,” he said.
Source: iwpr net
* Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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