Nov 3, 2009 10:53 pm US/Central
Flying Over Oil Fields, Watching Iraqi Money Burn
BASRA, Iraq (WCCO) ―
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Brig. Gen. Gerald Lang notices something else from the Black Hawk helicopter: gas flares down on the desert floor is Iraqi money going up in flames.
CBS
This week WCCO-TV Don Shelby and photographer Tom Aviles are reporting from southern Iraq where Minnesota's 34th Red Bull Infantry Division is in control of half of the country.
In recent months, the term "standing up" has been used often. How the military is trying to "stand up" the Iraqi armed forces. It means, simply, making the Iraqi military strong enough to defend itself.
That is working well, from all reports, and Minnesota's 34th Infantry Division is doing a lot of that training. But part of its mission is to "stand up" Iraq's economic future. And the future of Iraq is all about a place called Rumaila.
Black Hawk helicopters await Shelby, Aviles and the soldiers escorting them on the tarmac at Contingency Operating Base Basra. They will fly the Red Bulls deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Gerald Lang from Sauk Rapids, Minn., as well as Shelby and Aviles over the Rumaila oil field -- a super giant.
Also along for the ride is Ian Sheridan, energy specialist for the Provincial Reconstruction Team of the U.S. State Department.
"I think it's somewhere around 7 to 10 billion barrels of proven reserves," said Sheridan.
As rich in oil as Iraq is, it has been poor at getting it out of the ground and to market. Now, British and Chinese oil companies say they will easily triple current production from 1 million barrels a day to 3 million.
China and England believe southern Iraq is now safe enough to make the investment. It is safe for development due largely to the Red Bulls. And Lang is an astute observer of Iraq's economic future.
He notices something else from the Black Hawk: gas flares down on the desert floor is Iraqi money going up in flames.
"The estimate from Shell Oil ... about $6 million a day that is being flared off," said the general.
"If you convert that into 40 gallons LP cylinder tanks, which a lot of people use here for cooking, that's about 330,000 of those 40-pound cylinders per day that are being flared off here and not being captured here for a number of different things, for generating electricity or for LP gas," he said.
Lang knows there is much to be done and only 26 months left before the Red Bulls return to Minnesota.
The pipelines to the port are old and worn. They leak crude into the sand, another waste.
Sheridan said the black soot from the flare-off sometimes blackens the skies over Iraq and respiratory disease and lung cancer is endemic. And the oil terminal in the Persian Gulf off the sprawling port of Oom Qasr was built to feed four supertankers at once, but can, in truth, handle only one.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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