According to the Oil and Energy Committee of Kirkuks provincial council, the shortage of gasoline in Kirkuk is over.
Mr Jamal Mawloud member of the committee said that Kirkuks daily demands of 1.2 million liters of fuel are now being provided by the government. In August, Kirkuk witnessed a severe fuel shortage. Car owners had to buy overpriced fuel from the black market and people in Kirkuk and other cities of the province protested in the streets.
Mr Qader Omar director of Kirkuk's Oil Products Company said that the electricity shortage was responsible for the shortage of gasoline since people used fuel to run generators.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry used to allocate only 825,000 liters of gasoline to the area of Kirkuk. Later, this amount was increased to one million liters. Now the provincial council claimed that enough fuel is being provided. However, there are reports that gasoline is still being smuggled.
Mr Khalil Ibrahim who owns a gas station in Kirkuk said that he is aware of smuggling. Smuggling continues and this may be a reason for new crisis.
A source in the Kirkuk police who preferred not to be named denied any smuggling but said that police is aware of the problem. We have checkpoints to prohibit any smuggling of fuel out of the province but we haven't detected any smuggling operation so far."
According to the Oil Ministry, the shortage of gasoline is a problem in Iraq. Even 8 years after the war, the country is still not capable of producing enough oil and gas to meet its own demands.
While Iraq produces 8 million liters of liquid gas per day it consumes approximately 12 million liters. The situation is even worse as far as oil is concerned: 12 million liters of refined oil are produced in Iraq every day however another 12 million liters have to be imported from international markets.
Iraq consumes a lot of gas because of a large number of gas power plants. The country is suffering from an ongoing electricity shortage in the country. With temperatures often soaring over 50 degrees Celsius during the summer month’s demand for electricity in Iraq during this period is estimated at around 14,000 MW.
According to government figures, the energy currently available to Iraq stands at around 9,000 MW. The Energy Ministry recently promised that Iraq's electricity crisis will end in 2013, when only a few more energy plants were built.
This will most likely increase the gas and oil deficit of the country. Though the Oil Ministry repeatedly announced plans to quintuple the country's oil production from 2.5 million barrels of oil per day in 2009 to 12 million barrels of oil per in 2016, there would not be enough refineries to process crude oil into usable fuel.
In a move that seemed to be a panic reaction, the federal Oil Ministry stopped its procedure to provide free fuel to owners of generators in early October. The procedure had started in June in order to increase private energy production and cost USD 400 million USD.
(Sourced from AK News)
