US badly needs a new gameplan in Iraq

There has always been talk, a lot of talk, that the United States went to war in Iraq over the Middle Eastern nation's vast oil supplies.

I have to say, I've always agreed with that sentiment, especially since no one found any of the weapons of mass destruction that George Bush was determined to protect the rest of the world from.

C'mon, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said it best, even if he backtracked later under White House pressure. "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he said in his memoir.

Sadly, and much like the war against the spread of communism in Vietnam, the US has not only bungled any chance of getting Iraqi oil, it has shot itself in the foot and driven prices up too.

Oil prices are hitting record highs each week, topping $84 a barrel last week. That predicted fall price dip that analysts were sure was just around the corner never materialised and people in Europe and North America are probably facing down some pretty expensive heating for their homes this winter. Even the dreaded $100 barrel of oil is seeming more of a given all the time.

And despite repeated promises from a raft of US officials in Iraq - most notably General David Petraeus, the current US military commander in Iraq, and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker who claim that steady progress is being made - there seems to be little that is going right.

Aside from the accusations that US-based private security firm Blackwater has been shooting civilians, the coalition of the increasingly unwilling has been unable to get Iraqi oil flowing once again.

The nation has more than 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and more than 112 billion barrels of oil, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and estimates place Iraqi reserves between 220 billion and 300 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. That is a whole lot of energy lying beneath improvised explosive devices and scarred terrain.

But despite its wealth of natural resources, oil continues to trickle slowly and painfully out of Iraq. The US is having a hard time keeping what is working safe, much less tackling the rebuilding and upgrading necessary to bring Iraq's infrastructure up to par.

According to Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, there have been roughly 400 insurgent attacks against Iraq's oil infrastructure since 2003.

An attack on the Kirkuk-Bayji pipeline in mid-September killed 26 and injured 59, and energy-related targets will continue to appeal to insurgents who want to keep the chaos going.

Although oil started flowing north into Turkey this September, after being at a standstill since the start of the war thanks to a steady pattern of attacks, even that is now looking shaky thanks to some Turkish saber-rattling.

It is no surprise that Turkey, which has always been threatened by the resurgence of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, is huffing and puffing and threatening to invade the semi-autonomous region, citing the need to fight Kurdish terrorism at home.

But such a move could cut off one of the US's routes into the region and add to instability already precarious thanks to the regular rants coming out of Tehran.

The US is in serious need of a new - or perhaps their first real - gameplan, considering all they've done so far is drive up energy prices while destabilising the region they depend on the most to keep their engines running.

- The writer is a former Business Editor at Gulf News, and has covered energy issues in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics and the Middle East.