BAGHDAD — Severe gasoline shortages that contributed to two days of rioting in Basra last weekend are at least partly the result of improving economic conditions that have boosted demand, officials say.
U.S. military authorities said they have for the first time begun turning significant resources to the problem — which has seen drivers waiting from dawn to dusk to fill their tanks.
“We have a fuel-distribution challenge,” U.S. commander in Iraq Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said last week. “I have asked my staff and commanders to facilitate the fair and equitable distribution of fuel.”
The frustration of waiting in line for 12 or more hours in temperatures above 120 degrees was cited along with repeated electricity outages as a reason for weekend riots in the southern city of Basra, which led to the stoning of British forces and the shooting deaths of two Iraqis and a foreign security guard.
Coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said yesterday that authorities had responded by sending 6.6 million gallons of gasoline into the country, much of it to the south.
The problem with fuel is threefold, said a U.S. military official managing the issue in south-central Iraq. First, Iraqi refineries are operating only at half the capacity they were before the war, and even then they were not yielding what they should have, for political and technological reasons.
Second, large quantities of oil are being siphoned out of the pipelines that crisscross the country, and smugglers are selling it internationally. On Aug. 7, coalition ships in the Persian Gulf took possession of a vessel and its cargo of 3,000 metric tons of diesel fuel.
“We estimate they are illegally exporting 2.5 million to 3 million liters of diesel every day,” the official said, an amount equal to roughly 750,000 gallons.
Third, distribution problems are aggravating the problem. The “strategic” north-south pipelines, which once moved 1.4 million barrels per day, are largely out of operation because of saboteurs and damage from the war.
“The way you do it is you dig a ditch, then drill a big hole into the pipeline and gallons and gallons of it spills out into a ditch,” the official said. “Then you fire up your generator and pump it into the truck.”
An Iraqi civil defense force called the Facility Protective Service is being created, in part to protect the pipelines. In the meantime, trucks take oil across long distances on sometimes dangerous roads.
Despite the problems, gasoline shortages had largely been brought under control earlier this summer. But the fuel lines have grown long again as money is pumped into the economy and more Iraqis buy cars.
Tourism is also starting to catch on, especially in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. This is increasing demand, as is an influx of diesel-powered generators to fire up new refrigerators, air conditioners, and dishwashers and to fill in during the 12 hours every day when the main electric grid is shut down.
“It took us this long to get people’s attention on the problem,” a U.S. military official said. “The Ministry of Oil has done a lot to mitigate the problem, but the [Coalition Provisional Authority] was like, ’Really, the lines are that long?’”
Baghdad, where the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council are based, is largely insulated from the problem. The capital receives 60 percent of the nation’s fuel, the official said, and U.S. and Iraqi government officials have drivers who refuel their vehicles. But even here, the lines for gas are lengthening.
“The realization that fuel is really a problem finally hit them” last week, the official said.
Iraqis also complain about gas prices, but it is hard for a Westerner to muster sympathy when they pay 75 Iraqi dinars per gallon in government-run gas stations, down from 190 dinars a month ago. The Iraqi dinar trades at about 1,500 to a U.S. dollar, so gas costs less than 5 cents a gallon. To the Iraqi mind, oil is almost as ubiquitous as air and should not cost much more.
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