Unguarded Iraqi pipelines easy targets for thieves, insurgents

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Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Unguarded Iraqi pipelines easy targets for thieves, insurgents
By Scott Canon | McClatchy Newspapers

SAFRA, Iraq — Anyone who wants to understand why Iraq's Northern Oil Co. still runs at just 20 percent of capacity need only visit the crews assigned to undo the work of thieves and saboteurs along the 50-mile stretch of pipes that dip below and above the sandy terrain between Kirkuk and Baiji.

More than two weeks after terrorists first hit this remote section of pipeline, a ragged crew wrapped up another patch job in its ever-ending repair work.

A backhoe scooped up spilled gasoline from below the repaired line while a bulldozer shoved Iraqi desert into the hole that had been dug around it. The gasoline fumes could make a pit crew wheeze.

"We fix it here, they break it there. We fix it there, they blow it up somewhere else," said Khabbuz Bai Hassan, the head engineer on the repair job, as he wiped his brow and squinted toward the horizon. "I don't know where it ends."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/17456.html