The vast majority of the attacks around the country each day are directed at U.S. troops and the Iraqis who support them, including the Feb. 1 bombing in Arbil that killed 100 Kurds and wounded 247 more. Similar strikes at targets like the Kirkuk fields or Daura oil refinery in Baghdad could seriously disrupt production and oil exports, and have major implications for Iraq’s recovery. “One [major] attack could be catastrophic to the oil industry,” says Col. Tom O’Donnell, commander of Task Force Shield, which oversees the security of Iraq’s oil infrastructure. Anti-U.S. fighters have launched at least 100 attacks against the oil infrastructure since Baghdad fell, including two last fall on a northern pipeline route that halted crude-oil exports to Turkey. The Coalition has been forced to buy oil products from neighboring countries to meet domestic needs.
U.S. war planners gave high priority to seizing Iraq’s northern and southern oilfields before Saddam Hussein could sabotage them. But after major combat operations ended, manpower was shifted elsewhere, leaving the oil industry dangerously exposed. To protect its infrastructure, last September the Pentagon awarded a $40 million contract to Erinys International, a private, Britain-based security firm. In only four months Erinys has trained, armed and deployed more than 9,000 Iraqi guards across the country, and plans to expand its force to nearly 15,000 in the coming months. The U.S. military also struck deals with tribal leaders to provide an additional 5,000 guards in their areas.
The outsourcing deals have raised concerns that too much responsibility for Iraq’s most important national asset is being thrust upon a private guard force, though military officials say they’re satisfied with Erinys’s work. In Kirkuk, which lies atop about 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, a lone U.S. military officer oversees a guard force responsible for a 150-square-kilometer area. The vast majority of attacks and sabotage have occurred there, as well as in the pro-Saddam Sunni Triangle area northwest of Baghdad. On Jan. 14, security guards chased off insurgents from near the Kirkuk fields and recovered a dozen 82-millimeter mortar rounds.
Several international security companies submitted blind bids last summer for the lucrative contract to guard the oil industry. After the Coalition Authority awarded the contract to Erinys, a relatively obscure outfit formed only two years ago, allegations of impropriety surfaced. Some senior Erinys officials are associated with Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and the darling of officials in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. U.S.-trained militiamen from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, or INC, were hired as security guards, and the son of a senior INC member is a director of Erinys’s Iraq operation. Coalition and U.S. military officials deny any impropriety in the bidding process, and Jonathan Garratt, Erinys’s managing director, dismissed the allegations as sour grapes. “People have accused us of low-balling [the bid],” he told NEWSWEEK. “We just priced it right.”
The Coalition is already touting the success of its new “oil police.” The number of attacks on oil facilities fell dramatically in December. Still, they rose again last month, and the industry remains vulnerable. Decades of war and economic sanctions have taken their toll, and infrastructure will need several years to be rehabilitated. Coalition and Iraqi officials say they expect to reach prewar production levels of 2.8 million barrels of crude a day by April–barring any bad news.
