Iraqis queue at petrol stations as fuel crisis continues

Recent attacks on Iraq's oil industry infrastucture are exacerbating fuel shortages in the country, with many Iraqis queuing for up to eight hours to fill their cars with petrol or get gas for cooking, according to oil ministry spokesman Assem Jihad. Late last week output was halted at the critical Baiji refinery north of Baghdad because of sabotage, while an explosion was also reported at a pipeline near Baquaba, northwest of the capital. The situation is particularly acute in Baghdad where hundreds of people are queuing on a daily basis in lines kilometres long. Tempers are frayed with fighting often breaking out as people rush to get bottles of gas for cooking or heating. The price of a 30kg bottle of gas has risen from US $2 to $7 in the past month. Petrol stations themselves are finding it difficult to cope with the hordes of people crowding to get fuel. Sometimes people have to leave empty-handed after hours of waiting as the day's quota has run out. "Every day we are receiving nearly 50 percent less petrol than we were receiving last month, it has caused big trouble for Iraqis," Hussam Kubaissy, a petrol station manager in the Mansour district in Baghdad, told IRIN. This view was echoed by one Baghdad resident who puts some of the blame on the government in a country where oil is abundant. "It's shameful for a government of a country, which was [one of] the biggest producers of oil in the world, having their citizens waiting hours in a queue to get at least 40 litres of petrol, it must be funny to hear it," said Salah Thamer, who waited for over four hours to get his car filled up. Iraq holds the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia but years of conflict and sanctions have left its refineries in dire straits, with the country now relying heavily on imports of oil products. The oil ministry expects the situation to get worse if security doesn't improve, especially in major oil producing areas such as Kirkuk in the north, were pipelines and oil wells have been bombed inumerable times in the past year. He said that oil industry employees and firemen were afraid to work because they could be considered targets by insurgents. Last week brochures were distributed by insurgents around Abu Ghraib and Garma, cities west of Baghdad, offering around $15,000 for information about employees working with US Coalition forces, and translators and journalists working for British and US newspapers. So far, the Iraqi government has lost almost $7 billion in potential revenue between August and November as a result of attacks on oil infrastructure, Jihad said. "The insurgents are just making Iraqis' lives more difficult and delaying progress in the country," he added. Jihad also said that US forces have closed a major petrol and gas depot for security reasons in Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, where fighting has been ongoing for over a month. This too is causing problems for the capital as the depot is used for supplying its petrol stations. At the same time the onset of winter, sabotage and a lack of security on the country's roads are making it harder to import crucial oil supplies, Iraqi oil traders say. Imports of oil products - which come mainly from Turkey, Iran, Jordan and Syria - are costing almost $200 million a month, a figure that has risen since the war, with demand doubling to 20 million litres of petrol per day. On the black market, one litre of petrol is being sold at 75 cents, while the price of kerosene and gasoil for heating has nearly tripled in the past month to 50 cents per litre. These price rises mean that most families in suburbs of the capital simply cannot afford to buy gas and some of them have started to use farm cookers in their gardens to prepare their food. "I have eight people in my home to feed and my salary is no more than $100 per month, I cannot afford the price that they are asking for the gas," Ali al-Siluan, a father of five at Sadr city, suburb of Baghdad, told IRIN.