DLR'sCock
06-17-2004, 11:22 AM
http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1274&storyid=1487244
Iraq Oil Security Chief Killed
Telegraph U.K.
Wednesday 16 June 2004
Ghazi Talabani, the security chief for Iraq's oil fields around the northern city of Kirkuk, was assassinated today outside his home, Iraqi police said.
"He was attacked by armed men outside his home near the governorate building. He died instantly," Kirkuk police chief General Turhan Yussef said.
"One of his bodyguards was seriously wounded," he said.
Talabani, a member of Kurdish political chieftain Jalal Talabani's family, headed security for the Northern Oil Co, which presides over oil production in northern Iraq.
The security's chief body was riddled with bullets and delivered to the morgue.
The killing was the third major assassination since Sunday, when the country's deputy foreign minister was shot dead on his way to work in Baghdad, followed the next day by the murder of an education ministry official.
Talabani was the key link between US forces and NOC and the private security firm Erinys as they tried to shield Iraq's northern fields from attacks.
It was a largely futile battle as constant sabotage on the north's main export line from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan had effectively shut down the route since the fall of president Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Talabani, 54, who studied in Germany and formerly worked as an engineer for NOC, was charged with the company's security dossier after Saddam was ousted from power. He was very close to his powerful cousin Jalal.
Insurgents have unleashed a torrent of violence since the country's new interim government was introduced on June 1, with at least 149 people killed and 19 car bombs set off.
The anti-coalition forces have also intensified their attacks on the country's infrastructure, carrying out five oil pipeline bombings.
Insurgents shut down the nation's oil exports from its main outlet by the southern port of Basra yesterday after blowing up a pipeline to the area's two harbour terminals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to Original
2 Pipeline Blasts Halt Oil Exports at Top Iraq Port
By Edward Wong and James Glanz
New York Times
Wednesday 16 June 2004
Baghdad - Two explosions at oil pipelines near the Persian Gulf forced the shutdown of Iraq's main oil export terminal on Tuesday for what is expected to be about 10 days, costing the country up to $1 billion in revenue.
The shutdown, which the authorities said was caused by a bombing on Monday and a bombing or malfunction on a second line on Tuesday, came on a day when snipers lining a highway and an overpass near Baghdad International Airport staged a well-organized ambush on a convoy, killing at least four foreign contractor workers, an American military official and a security contractor said.
Today, gunmen assassinated the security chief for the northern oil fields in Kirkuk, Asam Jihad, spokesman for Iraq's Oil Ministry, said. The security chief, Ghazi Talabani, a member of the clan of the Kurdish political chieftain Jalal Talabani, was riddled with bullets as he left his home. Ghazi Talabani was the link between American forces, the Northern Oil Company and the private security firm Erinys as they tried to shield the oil fields from attacks.
The specter of sectarian strife coursed through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday as hundreds of furious Shiite Muslim mourners staged a funeral march through the capital and accused a hard-line Sunni cleric in the volatile city of Falluja of ordering the deaths of six Shiite truck drivers. Their bodies were discovered Monday in a morgue in the neighboring town of Ramadi. The cleric denied giving the order and the identity of the killers and their religion could not be established.
The incidents came in the midst of a mounting number of dramatic and sophisticated attacks taking place as Iraq's new interim government prepares to assume formal control of the country on June 30. The sniper attack occurred a day after a powerful car bomb killed five foreign contractors and eight Iraqis in downtown Baghdad. The attack on the oil line was the most devastating so far in a series of ambitious infrastructure assaults clearly intended to paralyze the country.
The oil explosions crippled a pair of major pipelines in southern Iraq, shutting down exports from the country's most important oil-producing region.
The first explosion occurred late Monday about 10 miles south of the southern city of Basra and was a clear case of sabotage, witnesses said.
It was unclear whether the second explosion, at about noon on Tuesday, came as the result of another attack or because technicians tried to compensate for the first incident by increasing the oil flow in a parallel pipeline, causing a violent rupture.
In April, Basra's oil terminal was the target of a largely unsuccessful waterborne attack by suicide bombers.
Attacks on Iraq's electrical grid, oil pipelines and other structures have been increasing in frequency since a major outbreak of the insurgency here in April. Last week the interim Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said attacks on oil pipelines alone had cost the country $200 million.
"We've basically been in a race with the enemy to see if we can build them up faster than they can tear them down," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which closely tracks developments in Iraq. "To go after the oil undercuts the ability of Iraq to finance its own reconstruction and makes it more dependent on the United States."
Together, the two southern lines could carry about 80,000 barrels of oil an hour for export to ports on the Persian Gulf, said Walid Khadduri, editor of The Middle East Economic Survey and an authority on the Iraqi oil industry. Mr. Khadduri said the pipelines could take very roughly 10 days to fix and cost the country between $450 million and $1 billion over that time, although production could be increased later to compensate for the shutdown once repairs are made.
Jamal Qureshi, a market analyst at PFC Energy, said rising oil production by other countries had dampened any immediate effect the attacks may have had on crude oil prices. Another analyst at the same company, Roger Diwan, managing director of markets and countries, said that if repairs took much longer than 10 days or there was another major attack, global markets would be affected.
"It has a cumulative impact the longer it lasts," Mr. Diwan said.
Until the latest attacks, Iraq had been exporting an average of from 1.7 million to 1.9 million barrels of oil a day, compared to somewhere between 2 million to 2.2 million before the American-led invasion last year, Mr. Khadduri said.
Amid the increasing attacks to the oil infrastructure, the way that Iraq's oil revenues are being spent in advance of the handover of sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30 is being called into question. Iraq Revenue Watch, an initiative of the Open Society Institute, an organization backed by the billionaire George Soros, alleges that nearly $2 billion in expenditures recently authorized by a United States-controlled board in charge of the Iraqi budget until June 30 may have been rushed into commitments on ill-advised projects before power switches hands.
The money includes $460 million for reconstruction of the oil sector, even though most of the nearly $2 billion that Congress allocated for oil reconstruction last fall remains uncommitted to specific projects. Occupation authorities have maintained that there is no overlap in projects to be undertaken by the two pots of money.
The attack on the convoy of foreign contractors was also part of a succession well-planned incidents clearly aimed at disrupting rebuilding efforts. It took place between 1:30 and 2 p.m. on a north-south road veering into the highway leading to the Baghdad airport, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces. Insurgents on an overpass raked a three-vehicle convoy with gunfire. Passengers in two of the cars were apparently killed, while a third car pocked with bullet holes limped to a nearby American base.
General Kimmitt said he knew nothing of the identities of the victims and did not know exactly how many people were killed. He added that he had gotten a report of the attack firsthand "from some fairly shaken-up contractors."
A security contractor who had been briefed on the attack said it appeared that at least four people had been killed but said he did not know their nationalities, which company they worked for or the nature of their jobs. Besides the gunmen on the overpass, he said, snipers opened fire from positions they had taken up along both sides of the road. The contractor said he had been informed that the assault took place on the main road to the airport rather than on an intersecting artery.
The five-mile airport road is considered by foreigners to be the most dangerous thoroughfare in Baghdad. On June 6, insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's killed two American security contractors and two Poles in a coordinated ambush on a convoy of sport utility vehicles. Several contractors escaped by lobbing fragmentation grenades at the attackers and commandeering a civilian car at gunpoint.
Responsibility for Monday's suicide car bombing that killed 13 people, including five foreign contractors, was claimed Tuesday by a group headed by the suspected Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A statement claiming responsibility was dated Monday and posted on an Islamist Web site on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report.
The complicated tensions underlying politics and violence emerged vividly during the funeral march through Baghdad. Hundreds of Shiite Muslims marched on Tuesday from the sprawling slum of Sadr City to a central square to demand vengeance against Sunnis for the murders of six Shiite truck drivers in Sunni-dominated Falluja, 35 miles west of the capital, according to several news wire reports.
One report quoted mourners saying the men were attacked by insurgents on a highway on June 5 after they delivered a load of tents to the Falluja Brigade, an Iraqi militia being used by the marines to try to maintain calm in Falluja.
The drivers escaped and sought refuge in a police station. The police turned the drivers over to Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, a conservative Sunni imam, the mourners said. The imam then ordered the drivers killed, they added. The imam, however, denied that he issued such an order.
Still, Khaled Latif Matar Sihail, a tribal leader in the funeral march, told Reuters, "They are starting an old feud, a sectarian feud. We now demand blood from the residents of Falluja for our innocent sons."
The mourners carried the bodies of the drivers in wooden coffins. One 12-year-old boy, Muhammad Khudeir, told The Associated Press that he had been with the drivers when they were handed over to "a group of Arabs who spoke with non-Iraqi accents." Muhammad said he had been let go because of his age.
Sheik Janabai said in an interview on the Al Arabiya satellite television station, that if anyone had any evidence against him, he was ready to face justice before an Islamic court. He and a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, confirmed that the drivers had been killed but said they did not know who the murderers were.
Sheik Janabi said hundreds of Iraqis were killed in Falluja when the marines invaded it in April, and so it was understandable that people in town get angry at Iraqis seen as collaborators with the occupation. "People here think that anyone who works with the Americans or helps their mission is an American stooge," he said.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Thursday June 17, 2004
Iraq Oil Security Chief Killed
Telegraph U.K.
Wednesday 16 June 2004
Ghazi Talabani, the security chief for Iraq's oil fields around the northern city of Kirkuk, was assassinated today outside his home, Iraqi police said.
"He was attacked by armed men outside his home near the governorate building. He died instantly," Kirkuk police chief General Turhan Yussef said.
"One of his bodyguards was seriously wounded," he said.
Talabani, a member of Kurdish political chieftain Jalal Talabani's family, headed security for the Northern Oil Co, which presides over oil production in northern Iraq.
The security's chief body was riddled with bullets and delivered to the morgue.
The killing was the third major assassination since Sunday, when the country's deputy foreign minister was shot dead on his way to work in Baghdad, followed the next day by the murder of an education ministry official.
Talabani was the key link between US forces and NOC and the private security firm Erinys as they tried to shield Iraq's northern fields from attacks.
It was a largely futile battle as constant sabotage on the north's main export line from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean terminal of Ceyhan had effectively shut down the route since the fall of president Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Talabani, 54, who studied in Germany and formerly worked as an engineer for NOC, was charged with the company's security dossier after Saddam was ousted from power. He was very close to his powerful cousin Jalal.
Insurgents have unleashed a torrent of violence since the country's new interim government was introduced on June 1, with at least 149 people killed and 19 car bombs set off.
The anti-coalition forces have also intensified their attacks on the country's infrastructure, carrying out five oil pipeline bombings.
Insurgents shut down the nation's oil exports from its main outlet by the southern port of Basra yesterday after blowing up a pipeline to the area's two harbour terminals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to Original
2 Pipeline Blasts Halt Oil Exports at Top Iraq Port
By Edward Wong and James Glanz
New York Times
Wednesday 16 June 2004
Baghdad - Two explosions at oil pipelines near the Persian Gulf forced the shutdown of Iraq's main oil export terminal on Tuesday for what is expected to be about 10 days, costing the country up to $1 billion in revenue.
The shutdown, which the authorities said was caused by a bombing on Monday and a bombing or malfunction on a second line on Tuesday, came on a day when snipers lining a highway and an overpass near Baghdad International Airport staged a well-organized ambush on a convoy, killing at least four foreign contractor workers, an American military official and a security contractor said.
Today, gunmen assassinated the security chief for the northern oil fields in Kirkuk, Asam Jihad, spokesman for Iraq's Oil Ministry, said. The security chief, Ghazi Talabani, a member of the clan of the Kurdish political chieftain Jalal Talabani, was riddled with bullets as he left his home. Ghazi Talabani was the link between American forces, the Northern Oil Company and the private security firm Erinys as they tried to shield the oil fields from attacks.
The specter of sectarian strife coursed through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday as hundreds of furious Shiite Muslim mourners staged a funeral march through the capital and accused a hard-line Sunni cleric in the volatile city of Falluja of ordering the deaths of six Shiite truck drivers. Their bodies were discovered Monday in a morgue in the neighboring town of Ramadi. The cleric denied giving the order and the identity of the killers and their religion could not be established.
The incidents came in the midst of a mounting number of dramatic and sophisticated attacks taking place as Iraq's new interim government prepares to assume formal control of the country on June 30. The sniper attack occurred a day after a powerful car bomb killed five foreign contractors and eight Iraqis in downtown Baghdad. The attack on the oil line was the most devastating so far in a series of ambitious infrastructure assaults clearly intended to paralyze the country.
The oil explosions crippled a pair of major pipelines in southern Iraq, shutting down exports from the country's most important oil-producing region.
The first explosion occurred late Monday about 10 miles south of the southern city of Basra and was a clear case of sabotage, witnesses said.
It was unclear whether the second explosion, at about noon on Tuesday, came as the result of another attack or because technicians tried to compensate for the first incident by increasing the oil flow in a parallel pipeline, causing a violent rupture.
In April, Basra's oil terminal was the target of a largely unsuccessful waterborne attack by suicide bombers.
Attacks on Iraq's electrical grid, oil pipelines and other structures have been increasing in frequency since a major outbreak of the insurgency here in April. Last week the interim Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said attacks on oil pipelines alone had cost the country $200 million.
"We've basically been in a race with the enemy to see if we can build them up faster than they can tear them down," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which closely tracks developments in Iraq. "To go after the oil undercuts the ability of Iraq to finance its own reconstruction and makes it more dependent on the United States."
Together, the two southern lines could carry about 80,000 barrels of oil an hour for export to ports on the Persian Gulf, said Walid Khadduri, editor of The Middle East Economic Survey and an authority on the Iraqi oil industry. Mr. Khadduri said the pipelines could take very roughly 10 days to fix and cost the country between $450 million and $1 billion over that time, although production could be increased later to compensate for the shutdown once repairs are made.
Jamal Qureshi, a market analyst at PFC Energy, said rising oil production by other countries had dampened any immediate effect the attacks may have had on crude oil prices. Another analyst at the same company, Roger Diwan, managing director of markets and countries, said that if repairs took much longer than 10 days or there was another major attack, global markets would be affected.
"It has a cumulative impact the longer it lasts," Mr. Diwan said.
Until the latest attacks, Iraq had been exporting an average of from 1.7 million to 1.9 million barrels of oil a day, compared to somewhere between 2 million to 2.2 million before the American-led invasion last year, Mr. Khadduri said.
Amid the increasing attacks to the oil infrastructure, the way that Iraq's oil revenues are being spent in advance of the handover of sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30 is being called into question. Iraq Revenue Watch, an initiative of the Open Society Institute, an organization backed by the billionaire George Soros, alleges that nearly $2 billion in expenditures recently authorized by a United States-controlled board in charge of the Iraqi budget until June 30 may have been rushed into commitments on ill-advised projects before power switches hands.
The money includes $460 million for reconstruction of the oil sector, even though most of the nearly $2 billion that Congress allocated for oil reconstruction last fall remains uncommitted to specific projects. Occupation authorities have maintained that there is no overlap in projects to be undertaken by the two pots of money.
The attack on the convoy of foreign contractors was also part of a succession well-planned incidents clearly aimed at disrupting rebuilding efforts. It took place between 1:30 and 2 p.m. on a north-south road veering into the highway leading to the Baghdad airport, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces. Insurgents on an overpass raked a three-vehicle convoy with gunfire. Passengers in two of the cars were apparently killed, while a third car pocked with bullet holes limped to a nearby American base.
General Kimmitt said he knew nothing of the identities of the victims and did not know exactly how many people were killed. He added that he had gotten a report of the attack firsthand "from some fairly shaken-up contractors."
A security contractor who had been briefed on the attack said it appeared that at least four people had been killed but said he did not know their nationalities, which company they worked for or the nature of their jobs. Besides the gunmen on the overpass, he said, snipers opened fire from positions they had taken up along both sides of the road. The contractor said he had been informed that the assault took place on the main road to the airport rather than on an intersecting artery.
The five-mile airport road is considered by foreigners to be the most dangerous thoroughfare in Baghdad. On June 6, insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's killed two American security contractors and two Poles in a coordinated ambush on a convoy of sport utility vehicles. Several contractors escaped by lobbing fragmentation grenades at the attackers and commandeering a civilian car at gunpoint.
Responsibility for Monday's suicide car bombing that killed 13 people, including five foreign contractors, was claimed Tuesday by a group headed by the suspected Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A statement claiming responsibility was dated Monday and posted on an Islamist Web site on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report.
The complicated tensions underlying politics and violence emerged vividly during the funeral march through Baghdad. Hundreds of Shiite Muslims marched on Tuesday from the sprawling slum of Sadr City to a central square to demand vengeance against Sunnis for the murders of six Shiite truck drivers in Sunni-dominated Falluja, 35 miles west of the capital, according to several news wire reports.
One report quoted mourners saying the men were attacked by insurgents on a highway on June 5 after they delivered a load of tents to the Falluja Brigade, an Iraqi militia being used by the marines to try to maintain calm in Falluja.
The drivers escaped and sought refuge in a police station. The police turned the drivers over to Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, a conservative Sunni imam, the mourners said. The imam then ordered the drivers killed, they added. The imam, however, denied that he issued such an order.
Still, Khaled Latif Matar Sihail, a tribal leader in the funeral march, told Reuters, "They are starting an old feud, a sectarian feud. We now demand blood from the residents of Falluja for our innocent sons."
The mourners carried the bodies of the drivers in wooden coffins. One 12-year-old boy, Muhammad Khudeir, told The Associated Press that he had been with the drivers when they were handed over to "a group of Arabs who spoke with non-Iraqi accents." Muhammad said he had been let go because of his age.
Sheik Janabai said in an interview on the Al Arabiya satellite television station, that if anyone had any evidence against him, he was ready to face justice before an Islamic court. He and a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, confirmed that the drivers had been killed but said they did not know who the murderers were.
Sheik Janabi said hundreds of Iraqis were killed in Falluja when the marines invaded it in April, and so it was understandable that people in town get angry at Iraqis seen as collaborators with the occupation. "People here think that anyone who works with the Americans or helps their mission is an American stooge," he said.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Thursday June 17, 2004