UPI
April 27, 2004 Iraqi pipeline
attacks go unreported By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent UPI - INSURGENT attacks on
Iraq's oil infrastructure, added to the damage
caused by U.S. forces during the war last year, are
helping to cripple economic and other
reconstruction efforts in that strife-torn country,
U.S. intelligence officials told United Press
International. The result is that Iraq's oil production, which
was projected by the Bush administration to double
and be used to pay for the costs of the war, has
not served that purpose because exports are down
from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.5
million barrels a day, according to these
sources.  Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
(left) has disputed this. In recent
congressional testimony, he declared, "Today Iraqi
oil revenues go to the Development Fund for Iraq,
where it helps to build new infrastructure and a
new future for the Iraqi people."
And he gave the current Iraqi export level as
2.5 million barrels a day, or "pre-war levels." "Simply not accurate," said Gal Luft,
director of the Institute for the Analysis of
Global Security and publisher of the online
newsletter, Energy Security. "Iraq's oil exports are not up at pre-war levels
because of incessant pipeline attacks." He said that the prevention of pipeline sabotage
has been a top priority of the Coalition
Provisional Authority and that currently about
14,000 security
workers have taken up positions along
important pipeline routes or critical oil
installations. Contract security workers are
equipped with the latest electronic motion sensors,
advanced surveillance equipment, night vision
equipment, and that mobile security patrols have
increased "six-fold." None of this is working, he said. Luft provided UPI with a list of some of the
sabotage onslaughts. - Beginning with June 12, 2003, there were
attacks on a pipeline near Kirkuk that carries
oil to the Turkish port of Cayhan on the
Mediterranean; on June 19, an explosion at the
Bayji refinery complex about 125 miles north of
Baghdad; on June 24, an explosion near Barwanah
that carries crude oil to the al Dawrah
refinery.
- In August last year, there were three very
damaging attacks, two near Bayji, according to
Luft's data. On Sept. 8, an attack ripped
through a pipeline from the Jabour oil field 20
miles from Kirkuk to the main originating
pipeline, according to the data.
- The list, by no means complete, reports 35
major and severely damaging attacks from June 12
to the end of the year and gives a total of
eight major attacks from January 2004 through
April, a major attack taking place on March 25,
when there was a blast at the main oil well in
northern Iraq that feeds exports through Qazzaz,
a chief installation of the Northern Iraqi Oil
Company that caused "massive damage," according
to a company official quoted by Luft.
An executive of Hess Oil, who spoke on condition
of anonymity, confirmed this: "These security
arrangements of ours aren't working, nor are they
preventing sabotage. The pipelines remain very
vulnerable, and the attacks on pipelines simply
aren't being reported. In fact, Luft claimed that the pipeline attacks
are on the increase. After staging more than 100
major attacks on pipelines in northern Iraq,
terrorists last month began to hit pipelines in
southern Iraq, near Basra. Another problem besetting the system is the
slowness on the part of U.S. authorities in
repairing wartime damage to the system, according
to U.S. intelligence officials. The Hess executive claimed that in April of last
year, U.S. Air Force planes bombed the Al Fatha
Bridge over a tributary of the Tigris River near
the Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk. According to the Hess executives, whose account
was confirmed in general by U.S. intelligence
officials, U.S. Air Force bombs destroyed "a key
mass of crude oil and liquid petroleum gas pipes"
that were part of a "critical node" of the oil
industry in that area. No effort was made by
CPA officials to repair the pipes until three
weeks ago, when it was decided to begin, the
Hess Oil executive said. Before the U.S. bombing, the installation was
pumping at full capacity - 670,000 barrels per day
to 690,000 barrels per day, but after makeshift
repairs, its output was "barely a trickle" --
around 300,000 barrels a day, this oil official
said. Even now, the source said, a quarrel over
whether the Iraqi Ministry of Oil or the Ministry
of Public Works should restore the pipes have
stalled repair efforts. The Pentagon did not return repeated phone
calls. On Saturday, suicide bombers attacked Iraqi oil
facilities in the Gulf, costing the country between
$40 million to $150 million in lost revenues,
according to newspaper reports. According to a report in the U.K.
Guardian, three U.S. sailors were killed and
five wounded near Khawr al Amaya, when a suicide
boat flipped over the 8-man U.S. Navy craft that
was approaching it. The Khawr al Amaya Oil Terminal was damaged and
at least 1 million barrels of oil lost in the
attack, the paper said. A U.S. intelligence official told UPI: "This was
an extremely serious attack, perhaps the worst so
far on an Iraqi oil installation." He added that it
was designed to distract U.S. military efforts from
quelling insurgents in Fallujah and Najaf and
demonstrated that the terrorists "are flexible in
their targets and tactics." He also noted that the attacks appeared "to have
been in conjunction with and support of the
Fallujah and Najaf insurgency." He said new safeguards and countermeasures were
being put in place "even as we speak" and that some
progress has been made. Luft said Iraq's northern pipeline to the
Turkish oil installation at Ceyhan has been
reopened after months of repeated sabotage, but
that its current output of 160,000 barrels a day is
"way below its full capacity." Luft also observed that pipeline attacks are not
simply a tactic but part "of a sustained and
orchestrated effort" to destroy a valuable
strategic target, increase the Iraqi people's sense
of insecurity and boost resentment of the U.S.
presence there. Copyright ©
2001-2004 United Press International
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