I am 64 years old. This diary concerns the worst environmental catastrophe to have happened in my lifetime, to my knowledge, and Americans own it. It is taking place in Iraq. I own it. You own it. Our families, friends, and neighbors own it, but it is the responsibility of American President George W. Bush and American Iraq Overlord Paul Bremer, to whom Bush gave the American Medal of Freedom. It is not happening by accident. It is being done on purpose, with full knowledge of the consequences. It is being done by stupid, evil people, both American and Iraqi.
Gulp some Prozac and follow me.
The Baiji oil refinery complex north of Baghdad is decrepit, and the American reconstruction effort hasn't been able to fix it. About a forty percent residual of the feedstock is a waste product, a very thick black oil which has been sold, in the past, to other countries for further refining. If other such inefficient refineries exist in this world, please tell me.
The refineries must shut down if the waste oil can't be disposed of. The refineries can operate if the waste oil can be disposed of. Simple, right?
The embargo and international trade sanctions we led and enforced, which began in 1990, and the 1991 Iraq war made it impossible for Saddam Hussein to export the waste oil, so in 1992 Iraqis began drilling holes in the northern Makhul mountain region. "The idea was to pump black oil and other refinery byproducts inside the mountains, where countless miles of cracks, caves and fissures could in theory contain almost limitless volumes..." reports James Glanz in a June 19 New York Times article. It was an untested, unsubstantiated theory, however, and it didn't work. The waste oil spread, poured over the mountain range, and seeped toward the Tigris River. Iraqis temporarily abandoned this idea because they were afraid the oil would reach Auja, Hussein's hometown. They began injecting the oil into dead wells in the Kirkuk fields.
Some exportation of the oil resumed after the U.S. and Great Britain occupied Iraq in 2003, but that didn't last long. Insurgent control of roadways made it impossible to carry the waste overland, and the impertinent pests insisted on continually shutting down the pipeline to Turkey. They even sabotaged the line to the Kirkuk fields.
Back to Makhul. Glanz says 3 million barrels of waste oil went to Makhul in 2004, according to Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a former oil minister. Three million barrels of oil is 142 million gallons. This rate continued "through at least the first few months of 2005."
This procedure fell apart again at some point, although Glanz doesn't say when. This time the pumping to Makhul wasn't stopped, because Hussein is no longer a threat. Glanz does report that sometime earlier this year, Baghdad officials began receiving reports that "refinery workers were spewing prodigious amounts of black oil into the mountain valleys and lighting it on fire." The fires were stopped within approximately the last couple of weeks or so. The waste oil flows over rocky terrain, it soaks the soil, it is seeping into the Tigris River now, and it will begin contaminating groundwater if it hasn't already.
The area is described as "...a kind of black swampland of oil-saturated terrain and large standing pools of oil stretching across several mountain valleys. The clouds of smoke...were so heavy that they obstructed breathing and visibility in the area and represent a serious environmental danger." About a dozen villages, perhaps 25,000-30,000 people, are directly between the oil and the Tigris River.
The magnitude of this crime, and the venality of its perpetrators, is beyond my meager comprehension. When I first read the article, at kurdishaspect.com, I thought it was so preposterous it must be a fraud. Thanks to coloradobl for setting me straight.
The United Nations must investigate this. You think?
Glanz reminds us that our compassionate chimp and our skilled leaders want the international community to pour assets into Iraq reconstruction. This is the same reconstruction program that can't account for billions of dollars. This is the same Iraq for which our Congress created an Inspector General. This is the same Inspector General that Bush castrated with a signing order that prevented the IG from investigating anything that had to do with the Pentagon, among other things.
jillian tried to alert us to an imminent article about this. I missed her comment, and most of us apparently did. I couldn't find another reference to this on dkos.
I first read about this on June 24, at kurdishaspect.com.
The original NYT June 19 article by James Glanz is here.
At some point rawstory updated its original tip with a link to an incomplete International Herald Tribune version of the NYT story.