Hoda Jassim (Baghdad)
Yesterday, Iraqi security thwarted two oil theft operations by piercing the pipeline carrying oil in Basra Governorate, 550 km south of Baghdad, while attempts to loot oil pose a major security and economic challenge to the Iraqi government.
The Security Media Cell in the Joint Operations Command stated, in a statement, that the Federal Intelligence and Investigation Agency at the Ministry of Interior thwarted two oil theft operations by puncturing one of the oil-carrying pipelines within Basra Governorate, while smuggling oil derivatives is considered an economic crime, as it represents great harm to the economy. Iraqi economy.
She explained that the forces seized 10 oil sites used for trading and recycling oil and its derivatives informally, inside of which are oil tanks of different sizes, containing an oil product of unknown quantity and quality.
The Iraqi oil smuggling networks are active in the producing provinces, in a remarkable way, especially those linked to the terrorist organizations “ISIS” and before it the “al-Qaeda” terrorists, while there is no accurate official data on the quantities of smuggled oil and the volume of revenues for those organizations, but security sources confirmed that more than ten Thousands of barrels are smuggled daily through Basra and Kurdistan. Security expert Fadel Abu Ragheef confirms that oil smuggling operations are not new, but they flourished when the terrorist organization “ISIS” entered the west and north of the country, and took root and became entrenched when the terrorist organization was able to control those areas.
And Abu Ragheef said in a statement to Al-Ittihad that “groups operating under the authority of successive governments joined the smuggling networks, and recently a large network was arrested, including officers headed by a security official with the rank of major general, and he is now under investigation to find out who are cooperating with these networks.” Security sources revealed to Al-Ittihad that 50 percent of the amount of smuggled oil is heading from Diyala to Kurdistan, in addition to Basra Governorate, via ships in regional waters sometimes.
And the sources indicated that “there is a long series of secret warehouses in which fuel is hidden before it is transported to its final destination, and that these gangs are effective, and they cannot work without the involvement of some departments and officials, and some names were reached in the recent raids, whether in Diyala or the rest of the country.” provinces, the most important of which is Basra.
The province of Basra is considered one of the richest cities in Iraq with crude oil, and it includes dozens of oil and gas fields, most notably the giant West Qurna field in its first and second parts, and South, Zubayr, Nahran Omar, Al-Saba, Al-Luhais and Rumaila, with a daily production rate exceeding 3 million and 500 thousand barrels per day.
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