Iraq faces winter without adequate fuel

A chilling and most bitter winter is in the offing for Iraqis as the country does not have enough kerosene to face up to the cold.

Despite their efforts, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) of the Iraqi Oil Ministry have managed to stockpile barely half of the required half a billion litres of kerosene for the winter, says a UN Joint Logistics Centre (UNJLC) assessment report released last week.

Every year, the Iraqi ministry of Oil and SOMO starts building up stocks of heating fuel in the summer and autumn to meet the winter requirement, but this year stocks could not be built up because of the prevailing conditions.

According to UNJLC estimates, against the buffer requirement of half a billion litres of kerosene, this year, stocks did not even touch the quarter billion litre mark by the end of last month.

When contacted by Gulf News, John Levins, head of the Fuel Planning Unit of UNJLC in Iraq, said kerosene stocks are unlikely to improve this winter.

However, he said a lot depends on how soon production by refineries is restored.

For the time being, the refineries, suffering from various problems such as inadequate spare parts, lack of maintenance of machinery, sabotage of its crude supply pipelines, are unlikely to produce enough kerosene for this winter.

The CPA and SOMO are taking necessary steps such as importing and bartering kerosene and bartering heavy crude for kero-sene.

However, under UN Security Council Resolution 1483, the primary responsibility of the Iraqi people's welfare rests with the CPA, being the occupying power.

Only about 20 per cent of crude goes towards conversion to fuels. Of that, about half is processed into heavy fuel oil as the refineries are in trouble and can only convert half this amount into usable light fuels such as gasoline, diesel and kerosene and other products. T

he UNJLC report noted: "Unusually, during October, it appears that relatively more gasoline and diesel has been produced than kerosene. It would have been possible to reduce diesel production in favour of kerosene.

"This does not appear to have happened, perhaps because high current demand for diesel was given priority over future kerosene demand. This practice may aggravate any kerosene shortage that appears in winter."

The Ministry of Oil's normal practice of building a kerosene stockpile for winter consumption is unlikely to be achieved this year. Imports will, therefore, have to take the place of the stockpile, but will have to continue throughout winter and even in spring, perhaps peaking at a rate of 8 to 10 million litres per day.