North-South Attacks on Iraq Oil

15 June 2004

Reuters. Sabotuers blasted two oil pipelines feeding storage tanks near Basra on Tuesday in the Persian Gulf, knocking Iraqi exports out for up to 10 days. A few hours later, gunmen attacked a convoy of contractors in Baghdad, killing some.

The same day, an explosion linked to sabotage ripped through a crude oil pipeline linking northern Iraqi fields near Kirkuk. (Click on map to enlarge.)

The oil markets recovered after some price spiking upon the news -- but the degree of volatility we’ll face through the summer is high and the focus is going to be on the oil terrorists. This well could cloud the larger issues of oil reserves, production and energy sustainability that had started to bubble to the top earlier this year. It would be unspeakably tragic to waste thousands of lives, billions of dollars and who knows how many years in an attempt to “stabilize” the Middle East only to find that there is a more immediate geological problem, not a political problem, that is intractable and one which we have not done enough to address.

John Robb’s Global Guerillas site covers the development and execution of the next generation of terrorism -- for which Iraq is a proving ground. Track GG for insight and analysis.