Key test in Iraq: Is the power on?

Controversy has dogged the plant since 2006, when Southeast Texas Industrial Services, the US-based firm that won the $350 million contract to build it, walked off the job, citing security concerns and lack of Iraqi government support, Moon says. The US government is spending another $28 million to finish the project, which includes "commissioning" each of the remaining turbines not already running and completing a portion of the plant that will separate crude oil and leave higher-quality fuel on which the plant can run.

Terrorism and sabotage, aging equipment, and "overwhelmed repair crews" also impede overall progress with Iraq's power grid, according to a report by the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity. The head of the ministry, Karim Hasan, has what US officials see as an ambitious, though not totally unrealistic, $25 billion plan to meet current power demand by 2010 and expand the power grid to handle even more demand by 2016.

Though his ministry is considered one of the most effective, poor coordination between ministries and bad governance overall within the Iraq government will stifle progress unless better coordination begins to occur, say Moon and other US officials. Then there's the war.

"It's a pretty aggressive plan in the environment you're working in," says David Pumphrey, a senior fellow for the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. "You're basically rebuilding a whole power network where people are getting shot, and that's very hard."

Regional and sectarian politics also play a role in the distribution of power. US officials say it's important to send as much power as possible to Baghdad in the hope that it could stabilize the city, home to some of Iraq's worst violence.

But in Iraq's outlying areas, the common perception is that the networks that distribute power often bypass the small cities and towns in favor of Baghdad, creating resentment. Militias in some of those areas fight to keep the power that a local plant such as Musayyib generates, sometimes using strong-arm tactics to siphon it back into their areas.

Resentment of "Baghdad-centric" power distribution has already led to the sabotage of countless power lines so electricity can't be exported to Baghdad, one American official says.

Because little of the power distribution network is run by computers – it's typically men sitting in substations and circuit shacks – the distribution of power is often determined by whoever has the biggest gun.

"If you have a militia walk into the substation and say, 'We don't want you to flip on that circuit and ship more power to Baghdad,' that happens," Moon says.

When the Musayyib plant is running, Iraqis will have a state-of-the-art facility that will generate power efficiently and far more cleanly than an older plant nearby, whose four smokestacks belch a deep black smoke all day.

It's a point of pride to the Iraqis who guard the facility against would-be terrorists and other criminal acts, says Army Capt. Charles Levine, a commander at a nearby US base.

"This is an Iraqi-owned power plant using Iraqi engineers, and of course they have American mentors, but this is Iraq's chance to stand shoulder to shoulder with its neighbors in terms of power generation," says Captain Levine.

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