Restoring Iraqi oil production moving faster than predicted

KUWAIT CITY -- The oil well fires are out, looted equipment is being recovered and damage was less than feared, leading U.S. officials to predict Iraq's southern oil fields could be producing 1.1 million barrels a day within seven weeks.

Revenue from renewed oil sales would be a big boost for Iraq's 24 million people as they rebuild after the war and years of decline under Saddam Hussein. At first, oil revenue would go into a revamped version of the oil-for-food program mandated by the United Nations.

The 1.1 million barrels would be about 40 percent of prewar levels.

Prospects are less clear for Iraq's northern oil fields. Industry employees there say the widespread looting that followed the fall of Saddam's regime left production facilities, offices and worker housing so ransacked that it's unlikely oil will be flowing soon.

Damage to the southern oil fields from combat -- or sabotage -- proved comparatively light.

Aware that Iraq's retreating army set 700 oil wells afire in Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War, military planners made sure coalition troops seized the southern fields before Iraqi soldiers could sabotage wellheads and other facilities.

"We were really fortunate," said Tom Logsdon, the program manager for restoring Iraqi oil production under the interim military administration headed by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.

"We didn't have near as much damage as we thought we would," Logsdon said in an interview Thursday. "The Marines did a lot of training on capturing the infrastructure. They went in so fast the Iraqis didn't have time to sabotage."

Iraqis troops managed to set fire to only a half-dozen wells. The last two were extinguished this week by Kuwaiti firefighters and the Texas firm of Boots & Coots.

The critical facilities saved were six large gas-oil separation plants in the Rumeila fields, which were captured with minimal damage. The plants, which separate natural gas from crude oil, could have taken a year to replace if they had been wrecked.

Thieves carted off some pumps, motors and other equipment from the southern fields, but security has been tightened and British troops have recovered 87 vehicles stolen from oil operations, Logsdon said.

Over the past few weeks, Logsdon and his team have inspected the separation plants, pipelines, wells and other infrastructure and hired about 170 Iraqi oil workers to help get them working. Military experts have nearly finished sweeps for land mines and other explosives.

"We're going through all these systems now to determine what degree of battle damage or sabotage was done and then get it opened up," Logsdon said.

They hope to bring the first separation plant back into operation in about six weeks, which would allow the pumping of 450,000 barrels of oil a day.

The other plants could be restarted in the subsequent week, bringing total daily output in the south to 1.1 million barrels, Logsdon said.

Getting a dozen smaller plants back into production in the rest of the Rumeila fields and in Iraq's northern oil region around Kirkuk and Mosul would further boost output. But Logsdon declined to estimate how long that might take, or what total production would be.

Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia. Daily production peaked at 3.5 million barrels in 1980, when Iraq began a ruinous war with Iran, and had gradually declined to about 2.8 million barrels before the recent war began.

Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid intends to re-establish the separate northern and southern oil companies that existed before the war, since the thousands of workers will be more familiar with that system.

The office is responsible for coordinating humanitarian assistance, rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and running the country until Iraqis can elect their own government.

The sale of oil will finance an oil-for-food program until the Iraqi economy gets back on its feet, said Tim Cross, the senior British official on Garner's staff.

"Once the borders are open, trade begins to flow, then I would hope that the oil-for-food program would not need to last for much longer," Cross said.