Oil security improves, Iraq chief predicts

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Security of the oil infrastructure in Iraq is to be less of a priority than the economic factors, Iraq’s national security adviser predicts.

“Probably the last two years, one and a half years, we were talking about security, security, security,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Friday at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Rubaie, in a mostly optimistic speech and answers to reporters’ questions, said the trend in Iraq is that the security situation is improving, along with help and partnership with the United States.

“If we can sustain this level of security until the end of the year, I can tell you next year is going to be about services, services, services. Economy, economy, economy,” he said. “And then security.”

Iraq’s vast oil and natural gas reserves have been hit hard by decades of misuse by Saddam Hussein, stunted by U.N. sanctions, and have survived thus far in the post-invasion war zone. While they need tens of billions of dollars in investment, the hydrocarbons and electricity sectors need a break from the regular attacks that are keeping out investment and hurting repairs.

“We’re going to have more capital investment for next year in 2008 in the oil sector,” Rubaie said. Iraq has been unable to turn capital allocations into expenditures, another setback.

He said he met with U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman while in Washington this week, and from the meeting produced a list of small “quick fix projects … to try to increase the number of barrels every day we get out.”

“Protection of the pipelines and the infrastructure, gas as well as oil pipelines, as well as the power lines, these are issues we prioritize for next year,” he said.

Iraq currently produces about 2 million bpd, though its reserves could handle much more. A five-year strategic plan has Iraq producing more than 6 million bpd.

That sector is pivotal,” Rubaie said, “it’s like the jugular vein for us.”

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Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor