Iraq Far From U.S. Goals for Energy

Distribution of Power

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Iraq does not have enough electricity partly because Iraqis now consume more of it.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, electricity demand soared 70 percent, as more Iraqis bought computers, televisions, refrigerators and air conditioners. Officials say the country now needs about 10,000 megawatts per day but it is producing only 4,110 megawatts -- although some days in August it has reached nearly 5,000 megawatts.

Although Hussein supplied Baghdad with nearly 24 hours of electricity a day and starved the provinces, the U.S.-led reconstruction has aimed to spread power more evenly throughout the country. Baghdad has six to eight hours of electricity, while the rest of Iraq gets about 13 hours a day.

Electricity Ministry officials control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the north and south, often using cellphones to call regional officials and order them to manually flip switches. Local officials often refuse to follow orders because their lives have been threatened by armed groups, Electricity Minister Karim Wahid said at a recent news briefing in Baghdad. At night, he said, when power stations in rural areas are empty, armed groups take over the switches.

Nor is everyone sharing power. "Some provinces only supply the power to their citizens and isolate Baghdad," he said. "This greatly affected the equal distribution of power throughout Iraq."

Another problem is that insurgents regularly blow up the towers that support transmission lines. On one major line between Kirkuk and Diyala, U.S. officials say, damaged towers have been down for more than a year.

Attacks have taken a huge toll on people as well as infrastructure. Wahid said he lost more than 1,000 Electricity Ministry employees this year, mostly engineers working on repair teams. Four hundred were kidnapped and killed; 300 were injured and 300 were kidnapped, he said.

The lack of security has pushed many U.S. contractors off the job. Bechtel, a California contractor that was paid $1.5 billion to take on electricity projects, said it pulled its workers off jobs repairing electrical substations near Baghdad last year.

"The risk was just too high," said Bill Shoaf, program director of Bechtel's work in Iraq. "The insurgents and militia activity there just didn't allow us to do it."

Infrastructure Obstacles

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Even if security improved enough to make infrastructure advances possible, Wahid says another big problem is that Iraq's oil refineries don't make enough fuel to run the country's power plants. Imported fuel has not been enough because power plants are competing with average Iraqis trying to run at-home generators.

U.S. officials say about 1,500 megawatts of power -- enough for well over a half-million homes and businesses -- are down at power plants across the country simply because they don't have enough fuel.

That problem stems partly from the unintended consequences of a U.S. reconstruction policy aimed at updating Iraq's aging infrastructure.