Iraq in talks with foreign company to safeguard pipelines
Officials from the Iraqi Oil Ministry are negotiating with an international company to set up an advanced security
system to protect pipelines from sustained sabotage attacks, a senior Iraqi oil official said.
"The foreign company has expressed readiness to set up a security system on one of our pipelines and see how it would
work," Hassan Kaftan, head of the Oil Establishments Protection Force, told. "I have met a representative from the
company and I will meet him again," he said. Kaftan didn't name the company.
Earlier this year, the Oil Ministry issued a tender inviting international security firms to submit a bid for an
effective security system for selected buried pipeline routes in Iraq.
"We have received several bids to set up such a system, but we have not decided yet," Kaftan said. He said 70 % of
the ministry's 18,000-strong security force are currently "unqualified and need further training." He said there is a
plan to add 4,000 more people to the force in 2006.
The force,previously overseen by private security firm Erinys, has been formed to protect Iraqi oil facilities, which
have seen hundreds of acts of sabotage since the US-led invasion began in March 2003. Erinys' contract to train,
supply and manage the oil protection force, which began in August 2003, lapsed at the end of 2004. The ministry
didn't extend the contract.
Oil is Iraq's only major source of export earnings, crucial to rebuilding its devastated economy. But frequent
sabotage of pipelines, especially in the north, has slowed the revival of the sector, which declined over decades of
war and international sanctions.
A series of attacks to the northern oil pipeline have rendered it idle for most of this year. The latest act of
sabotage closed the pipeline in early September, while recent suspected insurgents damaged part of the pipeline near
the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
According to the Oil Ministry's figures, such attacks have cost the government $ 11.35 bn in lost revenues from June
2003 to May 2005.
