Iraq Oil Report

Two of Iraq’s many needs right now are more electricity and more investment. A law being drafted could satisfy both, paving the way for foreign and domestic private companies to build power plants, a step toward fully privatizing the electricity sector.

“It should be short coming,” a senior U.S. official working in Baghdad on Iraq’s electricity sector told United Press International on condition of anonymity on the sidelines of an Iraq energy conference.

A top legal adviser is working on it with the Electricity Ministry, the source said, adding it “could be” before Parliament before the year’s end.

Others UPI spoke to refused to go on the record but confirmed the law was being worked on in a parliamentary committee as well, with the help of another U.S. official in Baghdad.

“Yes, we have plans for privatization,” Iraq Electricity Minister Karim Waheed Hasan told UPI. “We have two projects which should be under execution very soon. We are planning to announce many stations, many power plants.”

Also in the news:

• An Iraq parliamentarian, deputy of energy committee, pans the Kurdistan move toward oil independence
• Top Iraq PM aide says U.S. partition plans a “dream” of American political scene
• Humanitarian nominated to represent the U.N. in Iraq
• Iraq Parliament, urged by Kurdish members, addresses Iran on Iraq violence
• More Iraqis turn to alcohol to console new life of war
• American University opens in N. Iraq

Baghdad Burning, Goodbye Riverbend

There’s plenty of talk about Iraq’s oil – there’s a lot of it and, if developed correctly, could pay for the peace the country needs. But remember, people walk on the ground above the oil. They live and dodge bullets and militias and armies. Many, an estimated 4 million, have been forced from their homes. Half have left Iraq altogether. Riverbend, as she’s known to the world, has documented the war from her Baghdad window. Her blog, Baghdad Burning, has been published into two books and tracks one young Iraqi woman’s thoughts as the war begins. As the violence consumed her life, like many others, and electricity wavered, her posts became more sporadic. Her family vowed not to leave Iraq. This summer they did, to survive. She tells us about it today:

Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. … Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like. … The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed. … My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. … It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. … As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. … There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq.