Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (103469)	6/29/2003 5:33:04 PM
From: KyrosL	Respond to of 281500

Iraq Kirkuk Oil Flow Dn 50% At 0.295M B/D - US Advisor online.wsj.com The basic premise that Iraqi oil revenues will be used to rebuild Iraq is badly flawed. We need to allocated at least $10+ billion for immediate Iraq aid ASAP, to have a chance of winning the hearts and minds battle. Iraq Kirkuk Oil Flow Dn 50% At 0.295M B/D - US Advisor DOW JONES NEWSWIRES By Selina Williams Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES KIRKUK, IRAQ -- Iraq's northern oil output has fallen by almost 50% to 295,000 barrels a day, as sabotage earlier in the week of key pipelines feeding a nearby refinery has bottlenecked production at the oilfields, a U.S. oil advisor in Northern Iraq said Sunday. The renewed problems at the country's giant Kirkuk oil facilities will further delay U.S. and Iraqi plans to increase the country's output in July to well over one million b/d so that crude oil exports can resume. It will also hit the country's new interim budget that will be relying on oil sales for most of its revenues and to pay for post-war reconstruction. The July target for the North was 800,000 b/d. It also highlights growing concerns about acts of sabotage that are on the increase throughout Iraq, targetting oil production, export infrastructure, power generation and refining capacity. "Production initially went down on June 23 because of power problems possibly related to sabotage, then there was the explosion affecting pipelines going to the Baiji refinery on June 26," said Lee McLemore, a U.S. oil advisor to Iraq's state-owned Northern Oil Company that operates the oil fields and the main export pipeline to the Turkish terminal at Ceyhan. It took workers two days to extinguish the fire from the explosion that blasted through several pipelines supplying the Baiji refinery. It will take at least a week to cut out and replace the damaged pipes before production can be restored to the previous level of 500,000-550,000 b/d. On June 26, workers inspecting the pipeline also found a second crudely made bomb strategically placed underneath the pipeline, near a valve, which would make it difficult to shut down the oil flow. Fortunately, the bomb failed to explode and was later defused. Sources say the saboteurs are most likely members of the former regime and the attacks are well planned and organized. "The placement of the explosive very clearly shows that these people are knowledgeable and have probably worked in the oil sector," McLemore said. Sabotage is a growing problem in Iraq. There have been 95 incidents both minor and more significant in the past week. In the north alone there have been seven serious incidents in the past three weeks. But even without the ongoing acts of sabotage it will be at least a year from now before the Kirkuk oil fields will be steadily producing at the pre-war level of 800,000 b/d as fundamental repairs at the fields and in the pipeline network will still need to be made, McLemore said. Meanwhile, the main export pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, at a standstill since pumping stopped during the war, is still undergoing repairs. Sections of the line are being drained of crude before the holes - mainly made by saboteurs, but also caused by corrosion due to the pipeline's age - can be repaired. Barring any more attacks on the export infrastructure, the line should be ready for export in mid-July, but only at a rate of 200,000 b/d as the line isn't able to handle greater volumes or higher pumping pressure. Volumes will be ramped up to 500,000 b/d sometime in August or September, McLemore said. Before the war, the pipeline to Turkey was pumping around 1 million b/d to international markets. Iraq has yet to export crude oil produced since the war ended. Last Sunday, international oil companies started loading 10 million barrels of Iraqi oil from storage tanks at Ceyhan and in southern Iraq. Problems in the north raise concerns that targets in the south may also falter. Last week, Phillip Carroll, chairman of the Coalition Provisional Authority advisory board to the oil ministry, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview that output at Iraq's southern oil fields around Basra should more than double to some 1 million b/d from 400,000 b/d now, once repairs to a vital gas processing plant are concluded in the first two weeks of July. But Carroll's remarks seem optimistic in light of more guarded predictions from Iraq's oil minister last week and given eyewitness observations of problems in Kirkuk.

To: KyrosL who wrote (103469)	6/29/2003 5:41:08 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

Your note motivated me to track down a quote I remembered but couldn't place. From theatlantic.com When British administrators supervised the former Ottoman lands in the 1920s, they liked to insinuate themselves into the local culture, à la Lawrence of Arabia. "Typically, a young man would go there in his twenties, would master the local dialects, would have a local mistress before he settled down to something more respectable," Victor O'Reilly, an Irish novelist who specializes in military topics, told me. "They were to achieve tremendous amounts with minimal resources. They ran huge chunks of the world this way, and it was psychological. They were hugely knowledgeable and got deeply involved with the locals." The original Green Berets tried to use a version of this approach in Vietnam, and to an extent it is still the ideal for the Special Forces. The idea of any of the PNAC latter-day Lawrences doing something like that is highly amusing. Imagine Richard Perle as a young man, off learning the dialects and taking a local mistress before settling down to something more respectable. Far better to get your local "knowledge" filtered through tired old academics like Bernard Lewis, who are willing to tell the PNACers exactly what they want to hear. And if that "knowledge" happens to not exactly correlate well with reality in the conventional sense of the word, there's always an army of propagandists, professionals and volunteers both, signed on to the one true cause to reinterpret reality for you.

To: KyrosL who wrote (103469)	6/29/2003 6:15:29 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 281500

Yes, we're doomed. Only the kindness of others keeps us afloat. We'd be such a better country if we'd just allow middle-aged schoolteachers to molest young girls with impugnity. Japan, bless their anti-imperialist hearts, have no empire, because we defeated them. So now they've gone from raping Chinese and Korean children to simply raping their own. Their cup of kindness is overflowing. And they are just one kind country out of many.