Iraq hiring locals to guard, not bomb oil

BAGHDAD, March 5 (UPI) -- Iraq will continue its policy of hiring locals to protect new oil and gas infrastructure, especially pipelines, its oil minister said.

Such a policy, along with construction of better security infrastructure around pipelines, is assumed responsible for increasing production and exports in Iraq's northern infrastructure.

The pipeline from the Kirkuk oil fields to Turkey juts into a territory once heavy with insurgents, and from early 2003 to late summer 2007 it was mostly offline due to attacks.

Now those insurgents are paid not to blow it up, but to protect it, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said.

"This is what we are going to do in any area where we are going to develop an oil or gas field or lay a new pipeline or carry out any new activity," he told CNN. "We are going to recruit people from the very community."

Many explosions in the oil infrastructure are attributed to smugglers, such as those who accidentally make sparks when drilling into a pipeline and trigger a blast.

Most of Iraq's 115 billion barrels of proven reserves are located in the south, and about 90 percent of exports head to market from there as well. While violence is still rampant in the Shiite-controlled south as well, it's usually from an intra-sectarian power struggle, and neither side wants to target the lifeline of the country.

Iraq's oil sales generated up to $40 billion last year, though some U.S. State Department statistics put it closer to about $35 billion.