Local contractors were signed on to build the pipeline and while they were building it, they decided to make a hole in the pipe in order to siphon off oil and smuggle it away in waiting trucks or ships. As the oil passed through the Rahimawa quarter in Kirkuk the contractors added a special pipe of their own to siphon oil off. To cover up their activities, they built a huge auto garage.
Experts in the field say that putting a hole in an oil pipeline is far from a simple task and they believe that the smugglers must have had to bring in experts from outside of the province to do this.
“A person with no experience in piercing an oil pipeline cannot extract oil from it,” local oil and gas consultant, Shlair Hamid, told NIQASH.
“Anyone who wants to pierce a pipeline also needs to have special equipment to do that. Otherwise there could be a fire. All the evidence suggests that someone from outside Iraq was brought here to do this job.”
After holing the pipeline, they made a secret deal with one of North Oil’s engineers. In return for a percentage of the profits, the engineer agreed to record less oil flowing through the pipeline than there actually was. NIQASH’s source says that the oil smugglers were selling around US$60,000 worth of oil every day, of which the duplicitous engineer was getting about US$10,000.
The oil smuggling circuit was only uncovered after the engineer began to ask for more money. After the other gang members refused him, he went to the police. This resulted in a committee of investigators from Baghdad travelling to Kirkuk to look into the accusations. In the end, local police were able to arrest one of the pipeline contractors involved. However political pressure and bribes saw the contractor released. Now, according to NIQASH’s source, the whole oil smuggling gang remains at liberty.
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