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| Oil boom: Iraqi employees attended a March 15 ceremony opening a Najaf refinery. Oil production is expected to top 3 million
barrels per day in 2008. Qassem Zein/AFP/Getty Images |
Basra strike against Shiite militias also about oil
Iraq's oil minister says the assault helped curb oil smuggling.
from the April 9, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
"I expect lots of assassinations and sleeper cells to act up. There is a strong desire for revenge now," he says.
The intra-Shiite struggle for power and resources in the south is nothing new and has been under way since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But the battle in Basra has now drawn a clear line between those Shiites in the ruling coalition – including Maliki and the powerful cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim – and two main rivals that split from it last year: Sadr's movement and the Fadhila Party.
Although Basra is largely quiet at the moment, the fighting between US-Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army militia has intensified again in Baghdad, with at least 30 people killed since Sunday. The government is demanding that the Mahdi Army disarm; Sadr is refusing this before US troops leave Iraq and is now threatening to escalate the fight further.
Muhammad-Ali Zainy of the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies, says it's a positive development for Iraq's future – and its oil industry – that Maliki is targeting militias and exerting control in Basra. But it remains to be seen, he adds, whether Maliki is willing to go all the way or whether he's just carrying out the agenda of Mr. Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) party, which sees Basra's economic might as giving it greater influence in the south.
"The government must act evenhandedly and make sure the smuggling enterprise is not simply taken over by other militias," he says, adding that smuggling continues to be a highly lucrative business. The average price of one gallon of gas in Iraq is $0.40 versus $2 to $3 in Iran and neighboring countries.
Shahristani, who is very close to Maliki, says the security situation in Iraq continues to prevent foreign companies from doing much-needed repair work to facilities nationwide, not just in Basra. He says vital pipelines linking the country's largest refinery in Baiji, in the Sunni heartland, with Baghdad and Mosul are badly damaged by sabotage.
He says a substantial number of fuel tankers leaving Baiji end up falling prey to insurgents and gangs. Maliki's government is also at loggerheads with the Kurdish regional government over the authority to sign oil contracts, thereby stalling the passage of a new oil law.
The Ministry of Oil itself is in a fortress-like compound in Baghdad on the edge of Sadr City. Three mortar rounds fell on the nearby home of the interior minister Monday, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.
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