- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's
chronic energy shortages showed no sign of abating on Friday as a bustling
black market continued to keep official outlets starved of fuel.
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- With residents lining for up to a day to fill up with
gasoline at Baghdad's pumping stations for less than one cent per liter,
children by roadsides touting cans were offering a swift service for 12
times as much.
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- "People fill up their car tanks and empty them in
cans outside to sell. We cannot prevent them or a riot would ensue,"
said Omar Abdel Hamid, manager of the Abu Qalam gas station.
-
- "There is a lack of confidence. I have had supply
for the past few days, but customers do not believe there will be petrol
tomorrow and continue to hoard. We emerged from the catastrophic government
of Saddam Hussein into another disaster," he said before intervening
to calm angry customers.
-
- The oil distribution system in Iraq, which sits on the
world's second largest oil reserves, covered demand before the U.S. invasion.
-
- Now domestic Iraqi refineries are running as much as
55 percent below capacity leaving Iraqis hopelessly short of meeting their
needs, officially estimated at 20 million liters per day of gas oil and
15 million liters per day of gasoline.
-
- And power cuts, unsafe roads and sabotage of pipelines
have interrupted deliveries of oil products and liquefied petroleum gas
(LPG), the main cooking fuel.
-
- LPG cylinders were selling for 20 cents at crowded state
distributors and $2 on the black market.
-
- The shortages carry a political cost, damaging U.S. credibility,
especially since a subsidiary of U.S. company Halliburton was awarded a
contract to import oil products into Iraq. U.S. lawmakers criticized the
contract as being abortively expensive.
-
- The situation is so chaotic that drivers entrusted with
transporting products to retail depots hide out of view and sell their
shipment to waiting cars instead. Other Iraqis simply tap into pipelines
and steal the fuel.
-
- Adding to the problem is an extremely low octane gasoline
distributed in the country, which does not meet car specifications and
damages engines. Supplies of higher octane fuel produced before the war
have disappeared.
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- DEMAND SIDE
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- Customers at pumping stations are made up mainly of ordinary
Iraqis who cannot afford black market prices, such as Mohammad, a taxi
driver who has been waiting for eight hours in front of a station at Freedom
Square
-
- "I have to wait. What if my mother gets ill and
I have to take her to the doctor at night? There are no telephones,"
he said, referring to a network badly damaged by U.S.-led bombing in March
and April.
-
- "Those who thought that living standards would improve
after Saddam were wrong," he added.
-
- Women drivers, an overwhelming minority in Iraq, have
better luck as they are invited to come to the front of queues.
-
- "Iraqis have not lost their manners," said
one woman driving a Chevrolet stuffed with children in the back seat.
-
- Aside from regular requirements, demand has fundamentally
increased. More than 100,000 cars were imported into Iraq since the end
of the war and a lack of electricity has raised demand for generators and
fuel to run them.
-
- Small entrepreneurs are setting up generators to supply
residential blocks at high prices.
-
- "The electricity has been getting worse. It is four
hours off, two hours on at our house now," one man said.
-
- An engineer helping rebuild the power grid expected no
improvement soon, saying the power system was never rebuilt properly after
the 1991 Gulf War and took another hit from U.S. bombing.
-
- "Looting remains rampant for copper wires and transmission
towers," he said. "The whole system is disjointed."
-
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