Beiji, Iraq – U.S. troops in this oil-refining center are cracking down on a vast fuel-theft and smuggling operation that robs from Iraq’s economy and helps finance the insurgency.
The troops are chasing the smugglers and closely monitoring refinery workers. For American soldiers, it means ending a hands-off approach at the facility and doing jobs that would normally fall to police.
Capt. Adam Lackey of Trafalgar, Ind., said it was a problem that could no longer be ignored because the illicit money helps buy bombs and bullets that kill and maim soldiers.
“Our hand has been forced,” said Lackey, of the 1st Battalion, 187th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. “We’re going to make it harder for them, make it less profitable, and we’re even going to make it more dangerous.”
Before the crackdown began in recent weeks, fuel smuggling from Beiji was so extensive and flagrant that dozens of truck drivers would congregate just outside the refinery’s gates. In plain sight, they would swap counterfeit export documents or transfer fuel to unauthorized trucks.
Iraqi officials have long complained about oil smuggling, especially from the Beiji refinery and other sites around the northern oil fields.
In a report last month, the inspector general of the oil ministry, Ali al-Alaak, estimated that $4 billion worth of petroleum products were smuggled out of Iraq last year, including gasoline and crude oil siphoned from pipelines.
He described oil smuggling as the greatest threat to Iraq’s oil-dependent economy.
The Finance Ministry estimates that up to half of the profits from oil smuggling end up in the hands of insurgents.
So much fuel was disappearing that residents of this Sunni Arab city 155 miles north of Baghdad would routinely wait eight hours or more to buy fuel at gas stations near the refinery.
Smuggling is lucrative in Iraq because fuel prices are heavily subsidized by the government. A gallon of regular gasoline costs less than 70 cents. Smugglers make a substantial profit by shipping fuel to Syria or Turkey, where prices are far higher.
