San Francisco Chronicle: Oil industry in Beiji makes it bomb target

Insurgents focus efforts on damaging crucial pipelines
Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, December 9, 2007
(12-09) 04:00 PST Baghdad —

A truck bomb killed at least six police officers and wounded 16 people Saturday in the northern oil hub of Beiji, the second attack in two days to take aim at Iraq’s most lucrative industry.

The blast in the city about 155 miles north of Baghdad was also the latest reminder of an apparent move by insurgents to step up attacks in the north of the country after being pushed out of the capital by an increased presence of troops.

Although attacks on civilians nationwide have fallen about 55 percent since June, according to U.S. military figures, attacks in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces just north of Baghdad have remained the same or increased. The latest attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in Beiji, a major oil center and home to thousands of employees of Iraq’s largest oil refinery. Two pipelines, one carrying oil from the Kirkuk field to Beiji for refining, and another carrying oil north into Turkey, cross through the city. The refinery handles about 300,000 barrels a day from Kirkuk, according to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

Because of its strategic importance, the city is a frequent target of insurgents, as are the pipelines. In June, 18 people died when a suicide bomber attacked Beiji’s police headquarters. An August attack at another Beiji police post killed 24 people.

Since the war began in March 2003, there have been more than 460 attacks on Iraq’s oil installations or industry employees, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, which monitors security issues related to energy. These have included scores of blasts along the pipelines, including one Friday about 10 miles northeast of Beiji that sent oil spilling into the Tigris River.

The attacks have left Iraq’s critical oil industry struggling to increase exports, on which 90 percent of the country’s revenue is based. Before the war, Iraq exported about 2.3 million barrels per day. Last year, it averaged 1.6 million barrels daily.

In an interview Friday on Iraq’s Al Hurra television, Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani said exports recently had reached 2 million barrels daily. “Thank God for those high oil prices,” Shahristani added.

Oil analysts and U.S. officials, however, say that until Iraq’s government passes a bill overseeing management of the country’s oil fields and establishing a system for divvying up oil profits, the industry will remain stunted by lack of investment. Shahristani alluded to that legislation in the interview, saying the most important thing in the industry is “full national control over the oil resources,” including guaranteeing employment for Iraqis.

He criticized the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in the north, which has passed its own oil legislation and has signed contracts with foreign oil companies. The move has set the stage for a showdown in Iraq’s Parliament between Kurdish lawmakers and others who see the Kurdistan legislation as clashing with Iraq’s national interests.

U.S. officials have said passage of national oil legislation must be a priority for the Iraqi Parliament if distrust among ethnic groups and regions is to be overcome. There is no sign, however, that the oil bill is close to passage.

The Beiji attack came a day after at least 24 people died in attacks north of the capital.

Also on Saturday, a U.S. operation outside Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad, killed 10 suspected militants after they left a building believed to be an al Qaeda hideout and went into a nearby palm grove, the U.S. military said.

The suspects were killed in an ensuing gunfight and air strike, the U.S. military said. Afterward, troops found machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and sandbags filled with explosives. Two men were detained, the statement said.

In a second raid outside Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, U.S. forces moving against a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq member believed to be linked to senior members of the group killed one suspect and discovered an ammunition cache, the military statement said.

Two other raids farther north – one in Mosul and one in Samarra – left one suspected militant dead and 11 detained, the military said.

In the southeastern city of Kut, 100 miles from Baghdad, a rocket landed on the home of a senior member of the local Sadrist bloc of Shiite politicians, killing him, his wife and their two children, police said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article appeared on page A – 26 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/12/09/MNHJTQUUH.DTL&type=politics

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