Iraq races to avoid export collapse

The pipelines that export most of Iraq's oil are 15 years past their shelf life and were last inspected in 1991, when pipeline corrosion forced a 75 percent reduction in safe exporting capacity. According to a previously undisclosed study commissioned by the U.S. government, they are at risk of failing any time – an economic and environmental catastrophe that would reverberate from Baghdad to its neighbors and the entire oil market.More than $100 million a day is pumped through Iraq’s ma...