Global Policy Forum

By Edward Wong

Hussain Khalaf Tuma's mood was as foul as the smoke belching from the oil refinery a mile away. Cradling an AK-47 and dressed in a ragged leather coat, he crouched on a patch of dirt by a flimsy cloth lean-to, guarding an unseen pipeline that runs underground for 150 miles from here to Baghdad. A handful of men from his tribe, the Qaissy, took turns standing watch around the clock. They slept between shifts on two narrow metal cots. In the summer, he said, the desert heat is unbearable. In the winter, the rain soaks right through the tent.

To put up with all this, Mr. Tuma said, he was being paid the equivalent of $2 a day. "If this salary stays the same, I don't think I and the others will hang around to protect this pipeline," he said. "We can go elsewhere and get better work. Just imagine yourself here, sleeping in the wintertime, how cold it is these days. And you have seven children at home, and you're not sure if they've been fed. What would you do?"

Tribesmen like Mr. Tuma are on the front lines of one of the nation's most important battles: the effort to get the Iraqi oil industry running smoothly again. Nothing is more vital for bolstering the economic health of Iraq and the sagging confidence of its people than oil. But since the American-led forces invaded Iraq, pipelines have been under constant attack by anti-American guerrillas and looters, cutting exports of crude oil and creating maddening supply shortages in a country with the world's second largest oil reserves.

With lines for gasoline stretching for miles and drivers forced to wait all day to fill their tanks, fuel shortages have emerged as a potent political issue with the potential to ignite civil unrest across the country. Two American soldiers were killed recently while standing guard over long lines at gas stations, and many Iraqis warn that the kind of widespread rioting that broke out in August in the city of Basra may be just around the corner.

Sabotage and looting are not the only obstacles hampering the production and refining of crucial petroleum products for domestic use. Frequent power disturbances have shut down refineries for days at a time. The refinery here in Bayji, the country's largest, is operating with technology from the 1970's and desperately needs new parts and technical aid from outside Iraq. Kellogg, Brown & Root, the unit of Halliburton paid by the American government to repair the oil infrastructure, has done nothing to help, Iraqi refinery managers said, adding that only two Eastern European countries have sent engineers. A spokeswoman for Halliburton said that the refinery was not damaged by the war and so was not a high priority for repairs, and that managers could not expect to get all the equipment and technical help they needed immediately.

At the rich oil fields around Kirkuk, 60 miles to the northeast, exports of crude oil have been brought to a halt for some of the same reasons plaguing the refineries. To maintain high production, the oil company that runs the fields needs to replace spare parts that were looted after the invasion, said Manaa A. al-Obaydi, the deputy general manager for the company, North Oil.

Meanwhile, attacks continue on the main export pipeline, which runs 300 miles from Kirkuk through Bayji to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. "We can start up production for export, but we want to guarantee safety," said Asim Jihad, an Oil Ministry spokesman. "We want to guarantee protection. Whenever protection is ready, we will start production."

The Kirkuk fields can pump up to 700,000 barrels of oil a day for export, worth about $7.2 billion a year. The American-led government is currently relying on more secure fields around Basra for all the nation's exports and most of the overall production but wants to bring total production up to 2.8 million barrels a day by April, from 2.1 million a day in November. That means the Oil Ministry must get the northern fields working properly again.

Mr. Obaydi said the Kirkuk fields currently produce 230,000 barrels a day for refineries, which then process the crude oil into products like gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel, all for use in Iraq. But the major pipelines running south from the refinery in Bayji and from Kirkuk go through Sunni regions that are strongholds for guerrillas battling the foreign occupation. Last Sunday, along the 50-odd-mile stretch of road from here to Kirkuk, two men were scrawling a sign that read: "Long live Saddam Hussein. Death to the traitors."

Hashim Abdul Ghafour Shakir, deputy director of the government-run Oil Pipelines Company, which manages 4,200 miles of pipelines, estimated that there was an average of one attack per day by guerrillas or looters on the pipelines between here and Baghdad. On Tuesday, saboteurs damaged three pipelines, including one to Bayji. The pipelines, just a few feet underground, make easy targets. A broken oil pipeline usually takes one to four days to repair, Mr. Shakir said, while one carrying liquid propane gas can take up to three weeks because the entire pipeline first has to be drained.

Under Mr. Hussein's rule, police officers patrolled the lines, scaring off looters. But the American-led forces "were very slow to stop the looters, and maybe soft with them," Mr. Shakir said. Over the summer, Oil Pipelines and other pipeline management companies hired local tribes like the Qaissy for security. But there are questions about the degree to which certain tribes — especially those in the Sunni areas — honor their contracts. As the weary Mr. Tuma demonstrated here, wages — and thus morale — can be low. That leaves the guards open to bribery in a country where the practice was the norm under Mr. Hussein's government.

"Are we permanent guards here or temporary guards?" said Mr. Tuma, who was hired three months ago by a Qaissy leader. "If I'm only temporary, I don't care as much about this place." Mr. Shakir said the tribes were responsible for setting the guards' pay, and that Mr. Tuma's salary of $63 a month seemed reasonable. Tribes failing to protect their assigned section of pipeline, he added, will be brought to court and fined.

But Mr. Shakir also acknowledged that the lines' enormous lengths made them difficult to protect. "Sure, they need some backup or support," he said. He suggested that the United States Army run helicopter patrols. Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Fourth Infantry Division, which operates in northern Iraq, said American soldiers no longer had any responsibility for protecting the pipelines, though they might respond to explosions.

Even if the attacks and looting were to stop, the refineries and surrounding power grids would still need serious overhauls before production could be increased. The refinery here at Bayji can process 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day but is operating nowhere near that capacity, said Riyadh Ghassab, the director general.

The slightest flicker in the power supply shuts it down, and once that happens it takes days to get it running again. Its three plants were built in the 1980's with technology from the previous decade, all of it frozen in time when the United Nations imposed sanctions after the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Several companies from Europe and one from Japan helped build the refinery, but only companies from the Czech Republic and Slovakia have sent engineers to help with upgrades, Mr. Ghassab said. Because of security concerns, the Japanese company has been reluctant to send help, he added. He and other managers have been meeting daily with workers from Kellogg, Brown & Root, but the Iraqis have received nothing more than empty promises, Mr. Ghassab said. "They have consumed a lot of tea here," he said. "A lot of tea and paper, because all we get is paperwork from them."

Patrice Mingo, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Kellogg, Brown & Root was under contract to repair oil infrastructure that "sustained war damage" or was "critical to stabilizing the domestic needs of Iraq." The Bayji refinery was not directly damaged by the war, Ms. Mingo said, and the available financing and number of repairs needed at plants across the country have made it hard to immediately meet the needs of all the managers.

A mile away from the refinery, Mr. Tuma walked from his tent and took a sip of water from a dirt-encrusted plastic bowl. He and a 17-year-old Qaissy tribesman, Ali Hussain, stared at flames spitting from the refinery's chimneys. A chill wind swept across the desert; the long night was about to descend

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