| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Iraqi Oil Smugglers Describe Tactics |
| 2003-05-07 |
| Edited for brevity. It looked like nothing more than a working fishing boat, and that's what it was before the crew pulled out the freezer containers and the air compressor, inserting an oil tank in their place. They filled it with 1,000 tons of diesel fuel purchased from Saddam Hussein's state oil enterprise. Then they pulled away from this port at the top of the Persian Gulf and headed for open water. A few miles south, they were confronted by a U.S. warship, on patrol to enforce trade sanctions aimed at depriving Hussein of the wealth fetched by his oil. But all the sailors saw was a big boat pulling nets, followed by hungry seagulls. Between the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq this year, it proved impossible to completely cut the flow of Iraqi oil and choke off the regime's finances. There were simply too many routes through which Hussein could get oil over borders, too many traders eager to buy it, and too many Iraqis willing to take risks. There were two ways for the merchants to buy oil from Hussein's state companies. Outside of the United Nations-authorized oil-for-food program, they sometimes traded foreign shipments of food such as rice and beans for letters from the Ministry of Oil that authorized them to claim equivalent sums of heavy fuel oil or diesel. But mostly they paid cash, sometimes by wire transfer, and sometimes in sacks. They deposited the funds at the Al Batra Bank in Jordan, in an account under the name of the State Organization for Oil Marketing, or SOMO, according to oil industry executives. Once the funds reached the bank account in Jordan, a SOMO agent there notified the oil ministry in Baghdad, which informed a SOMO branch in Basra. There, in an office now occupied by the newly named leader of South Oil Co., a special agency set up to handle smuggled oil released the needed letters of authorization. In the first years after the Gulf War, the smugglers favored departing from Abu Flous, a port on the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Two pipes connected the terminal there to the prodigious fields of Zubair and a refinery in Basra, bringing in heavy fuel and diesel. They pulled their tankers up to the hoses, presented their letters of authorization and filled out a single sheet of paper marking the total. Then they were free to go. The tankers were able to cross into Iranian waters and remain within three miles of the shore as they traveled the length of the Persian Gulf. In that fashion, they were able to avoid U.S. vessels. The merchants paid fees in cash at a bank in Dubai, which then transferred the money to Tehran. The fees for passage were dwarfed by the enormous profits. The merchants typically paid Saddam Hussein's oil marketing agency $80 per ton for diesel fuel. They could usually sell it for between $180 and $200 per ton. The route through Iranian waters was closed off in 1998, when Iran began denying entry to the smugglers. The smugglers shifted to a larger terminal in Zubair. It sat directly on the Persian Gulf, but it led straight to where the U.S. Navy was patrolling most intensely. The smugglers began shipping only at night, hiring small fishing boats to scout for unwelcoming vessels, radioing back in code if they encountered any. The war brought everything to a halt. Today, British soldiers occupy the port, and the pipeline connecting the refinery to the loading terminal is on fire, sabotaged by Saddam Hussein's retreating remnants -- or perhaps struck by a shell. With the dictator gone, the once legitimate sailors-turned-smugglers wonder when they can go legitimate again, resuming shipments out of Iraq in the open, free of interception. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #7 Page hits are down, thank goodness. 25,000 hits in a day is good for the ego, really hard on the pocketbook. I've also done a few things to cut load. Feel free to post raw meat... |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-05-07 18:43:51 |
| #6 Well I doubt Sunnie will be back anytime soon. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-05-07 14:17:58 |
| #5 Fred--I see you went to the article and posted more of it than I did originally. I'm just trying to save you bandwidth by severely editing my posts. Have page hits declined with the lessened tempo of the war? |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-05-07 14:07:15 |
| #4 About 6.7 lb/US gallon, IIRC |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-05-07 13:57:20 |
| #3 .82-.92 from one source I found. Works out, if I count my toes correctly, to 205,000-230,000 gallons. Really big tank! |
| Posted by: Chuck 2003-05-07 13:55:06 |
| #2 I wonder how much WMD left the country this way. |
| Posted by: Penguin 2003-05-07 13:40:48 |
| #1 1000 tons? That's a lot of diesel. 2,000,000 lbs, to be exact. What's diesel's specific gravity? It's less than water, I assume, and water is 8lbs/gallon... |
| Posted by: mojo 2003-05-07 13:27:37 |