Looting Slows the Flow of Iraqi Oil

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the challenges facing Iraq’s oil industry than the sorry state of the Southern Oil Co. police station here and the ragtag security force led by Mahdi Abdul Nabi.

Back at work Saturday for the first time since the war began, Nabi and 11 fellow graduates of a coalition-run police training program have been given the task of helping fix a problem that U.S. and British soldiers have been unable to solve by themselves.

Now that U.N. sanctions have been lifted and Iraqi oil is flowing again, authorities say one of the biggest obstacles to resumption of exports is the persistent looting and sabotage of oil fields.

Across Iraq’s once-prolific fields, pipelines have been shot full of holes, pump stations and gas separators stripped of parts, control rooms cannibalized, computers carted off, and company vehicles and heavy machinery gutted or stolen.

“It’s a very different world now than it was before the war,” said Cpl. Anthony Roberts of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, one of the “Desert Rats” who conducted the three-day police training sessions. “Looting is rife. People are much more bold. It’s a bit of a free-for-all.”

Until security is restored, oil production will remain curtailed. Until production is boosted, exports will be limited. Until exports are plentiful, Iraq’s reconstruction will be shortchanged.

“There is extensive damage due to looting at several key installations and fields,” Thamir Ghadhban, chief executive of an interim oil industry management team, told reporters Saturday in Baghdad.

At one point, the Oil Ministry had hoped to restore production to 1.5 million barrels a day by early June. The target has been pushed back by several weeks, and Ghadhban said looting is one of the reasons.

The Southern Oil Co. police station in Basra bears witness to the crisis. No “smart” bombs or artillery shells struck the concrete building during the military campaign in the south. But looters laid waste to the station in the days that followed, smashing windows, stripping offices and stealing anything of value, including an arsenal of 600 rifles, two rocket-propelled grenades and a machine gun.

It’s enough to make a man like Nabi yearn for the bad old days.

“The rules were very strict,” said Nabi, 50, referring to the climate of fear that deterred potential oil field marauders during the rule of Saddam Hussein. “You either got executed or you got jailed right away. People did not take any chances on looting.”

During his 30 years on the Southern Oil Co. police force, Nabi never had to fire his weapon at an assailant or thief. Now, he and his colleagues have been instructed by British soldiers to ready themselves for confrontations that could escalate to gunfire.

Oil company police already know their way around weapons. Many routinely carried Kalashnikovs and other assault rifles as they stood guard at production sites and refineries.

But they rarely had to use them, and coalition authorities were unwilling to let the officers return to work until they received instruction in U.S. and British “rules of engagement.”

“If we see someone carrying a gun and you stop them, we can’t shoot at them unless they put the weapon to their shoulder,” said Lt. Mark Crawford, another Desert Rat assigned to the security force at the South Rumaila oil field. “You can only match force with force.”

The British lesson plan also included weapon safety, search protocol and “duties of a sentry.”

About 450 Southern Oil Co. police completed the training last week. More classes will be held this week. Similar sessions are being held in Iraq’s northern oil fields, where ethnic Kurds are being recruited to join the Northern Oil Co.’s security force.

The guards who reported for training at South Rumaila’s main production unit last week were a motley crew ages 18 to 80, Roberts said. One came on crutches. But most seemed eager to learn, he said, and expressed no resentment at being told how to do a job many have done for years.

Mohammed Jumah, 30, a security guard at the Basra refinery, Iraq’s biggest, said he was eager to start training this week after having discussed the issue with a colleague who graduated from the program Thursday.

“The only difference between me and my friend is he has a badge and he carries a gun. I don’t,” Jumah said. “I want to carry one.”

Coalition authorities say the oil company police will help address a critical shortage of security personnel. British forces assigned to the southern oil fields were stretched so thin at one point that they created a mock sentry by dressing a sandbag in military fatigues. The security scarecrow was left on its own to guard a gas-oil separation unit until soldiers were available.

The scene at GOS 6, another gas-oil separation site, shows why even a dummy beats having no one. Like the police station in Basra, the unit went unscathed during the heavy fighting between coalition and Iraqi forces.

Then the looters struck.

Inside the unit’s control bunker, circuits have been severed, electrical components disassembled, power cabinets ransacked. Equipment fragments and broken glass crunch underfoot; wires dangle from the ceiling. No crude oil is flowing through the separator units, which remove natural gas for processing into liquefied petroleum gas used by Iraqis as cooking and heating fuel.

Coalition officials say there simply aren’t enough soldiers to guard every well site, export terminal, oil refinery, gas plant and pipeline route.

That much was clear Saturday at the Az-Zubair oil field, where three young looters carried bags of plunder out of the site’s abandoned Southern Oil Co. police station, one of 10 operated by the company.

Back at the Basra police station, Nabi and his 11 subordinates were trying to make the best of a miserable situation, sitting on couches that had arrived only an hour before and commiserating about the lack of water, telephones and other customary office amenities. “We haven’t had any lunch,” one groused.

Some were dressed in civilian clothes; others wore uniforms of various styles and colors. Some carried weapons; others didn’t.

But even a weapon offered no assurance of respect.

One of the men unfolded a photocopied letter he was given by U.S. troops who conducted a training session.

“This security guard has the responsibility of guarding these petroleum facilities. Any questions regarding his authority to conduct these duties shall be directed to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines,” it said.

“Please do not take his weapon if he has one unless he has employed it wrongly.”

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Times staff writer Azadeh Moaveni in Baghdad contributed to this report.