It is dangerous to work in Iraq's oil sector, even delivering
the much-needed fuels, as five Iranians found slain on April 15 in
Ba'quba were doing. There were 399 attacks on workers, oil and
natural gas pipelines and installations between June 2003 and February
2007, according to the Brookings Institution Iraq Index, published on
April 16.
The most-recent attack listed on the Iraq Pipeline Watch Website, a
project of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, was on
Feb. 27, when "a convoy of four road tankers carrying oil products
was stopped shortly after it left the Bayji refinery [north of Baghdad]
by Iraqi militants. The militants shot and killed the drivers and burned
the vehicles and the cargo".
The pipeline delivering crude oil from Kirkuk to markets via the
Turkish port of Ceyhan has been attacked so often that it is no longer
fixed. And in early April, a section of a pipeline in Rumailah in the
south was blown up, a rarity in a Shi'ite-controlled area, but
possibly a telling sign for more violence.
The country suffers from a lack of transportation, heating and
cooking fuels - as well as electricity, also a frequent target --
brought on by insurgents. Muhammad-Ali Hosseini, spokesman for
Iran's Foreign Ministry, called the five Iranian drivers delivering
fuel from Iran to Iraq "martyrs". Three of them were Sunni and
two were Shi'ite, all ambushed on April 14 and their bodies found
on April 15.
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