Oil Rich Iraq Hit by another Fuel Crisis

[liveoaktx]

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-06/02/article04.shtml

Another gasoline shortage has struck occupied Iraq, as lines of cars up to 7 km long are visible waiting for fuel along the streets of the country’s capital city, giving Iraqis yet more reasons, beside the absence of adequate functional infrastructure and rising summer temperatures, to have flaring tempers.

"We never had gas crises before, even under Saddam,” said Abdullah Hamin Hammed while pushing his car towards a gasoline station over three kilometers away.

Angry that he was losing wages from time away from work, he added; “We had no fuel problems before the Americans came to our country, and now we have this. Why? They are stealing our fuel!”

[Old and In the Way]

1. Stealing to the tune of 3MM barrels a month?

Where's that oil going....and who's benefiting?

[Just Me]

2. I've been asking that question for quite some time now,...

,...and have yet to get any real answers.

[UpInArms]

3. I remember hearing that gasoline was about

.25 cents a gallon for Iraqis prior to our invasion - can't find anything to justify or validate that memory, but did find this:

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=00-A_39

National Security Alert for the Week of October 27, 2000


Item: Farewell to Cheap Oil

There is good news and bad news for U.S. consumers weary of high gasoline prices -- and the Clinton-Gore Administration which has earnestly hoped it could induce OPEC to do its part for the Vice President's campaign by increasing production. The good news is that the oil cartel's members have announced that they may increase daily production by 500,000 barrels next week, provided the price per barrel is still over $28.00 at that time. Venezuelan oil minister Ali Rodriguez, who is currently serving as the organization's president, has said that OPEC has a self-imposed "price band system," whereby if oil prices remain over $28/barrel for 20 days, production increases by one-half million barrels.

The bad news is that, as the former Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, has observed, the way the UN oil-for-food regime has been structured has enabled Saddam Hussein to make Iraq the world's "swing producer." The Iraqis are now producing approximately twice as much oil as before the Gulf War, enabling them to cut their output without appreciable pain to the regime (as opposed to its population, which Saddam is cynically denying most of the fruits of such production), but with potentially devastating effects on global oil prices and economies.

This sort of malevolence is the least we can expect given the findings of Laurie Mylroie's exceptionally timely and important new book, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America (AEI Press), which documents the evidence the Iraqi despot was the prime mover behind the bombing of the World Trade Center. Iraq's reentry into the Arab League at last week's summit suggests that Saddam may seek complete rehabilitation -- and retribution -- by leading a new oil- driven jihad against the West in response to the escalating Arab-Israeli conflict.