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A Promise Unfulfilled: Iraq's Oil Output Is Lagging
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem May 01, 2005 10:49pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Monday, May 2, 2005 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: May 2, 2005
With vast reservoirs of oil and the potential to rival Saudi Arabia as a megaproducer, Iraq has long tantalized the world's energy industry, as well as economists and political leaders worried about the impact of high oil prices.
But the new Iraqi government's glaring failure last week to agree on an oil minister and the sectarian bargaining over this crucial appointment, as well as the unabated insurgency, have been new reminders of the political faults that keep the country's petroleum promise unrealized.
"Unfortunately, oil in Iraq is being politicized more and more," Issam al-Chalabi, who was Iraq's oil minister in the late 1980's, told a conference of scholars and oil-company executives in Washington in late April. "This is dangerous."
Mr. Chalabi, now a consultant based in Jordan and Baghdad, is not related to Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile who, in the latest of his political ups and downs, has been appointed interim oil minister.
As recently as this April, a senior Iraqi leader evoked the eternal dream that Iraq could produce 10 million barrels a day - close to the Saudi levels - within 10 to 15 years.
Far less progress than that could alter the global oil market and aid consumers everywhere.
But two years after Saddam Hussein was toppled production is limping along at about two million barrels a day, less than before the war, and even at that rate it may be causing long-term damage to poorly maintained fields. |
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