Iraq-Iran Trade in Gasoline Booms

Iraqi smugglers repack cans of beer at the border with Iran, in Choman, northern Iraq, March 12, 2007. Smuggling across the Iraq-Iran border is a flourishing business in the remote corner of northeast Iraq, a rugged mountainous area where the lure of making a quick profit dwarfs the little government authority there is. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed) (Yahya Ahmed - AP)

But it is the fuel trade into Iraq _ both gasoline for autos and gas for cooking _ that is the most lucrative and busiest here.

Iraq has the world's third-largest proven oil reserves _ about 115 billion barrels _ but shortages of gasoline and other oil products are chronic because of insurgent attacks on oil installations, plus corruption and black marketeering.

From here, the smugglers of both gasoline and gas canisters sell their goods both nearby and in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, and from there to other cities across the country.

Delshad Abdul-Rahman Mohammed, the official in charge of oil products in the regional Kurdish government, blames the central government in Baghdad for the flourishing black market in fuel, arguing that Kurdish provinces are not getting their fair share of the country's available gasoline supplies.

Like others, Mohammed credits the "Marez" _ the illegal free trade zones _ for helping Iraqis cope with the shortages. Ironically, he notes, the Marez played a similar role during nearly 13 years of U.N. sanctions slapped on Iraq in 1990.

Near the border one day _ not far from the post of police Capt. Mohiedeen, a 30-year-old Iraqi, Mustafa Rasoul, was busy loading his Korean-made truck with gas cylinders _ an item that, along with oil products, has been in short supply in Iraq for most of the past four years of war and disruption.

The gas cylinders, used for cooking in homes across Iraq, had just arrived across the border from Iran, where they had been filled.

Rasoul sells the filled containers in Iraq for $14 apiece, making a $5 profit on each.

"I am not sabotaging anyone's economy," said Rasoul. "I am helping Iraq and Iraqis."

___

Associated Press reporters Yahya Barzanji in northern Iraq and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.