Oil costs $1,190 a barrel in Iraq: A Top US. Marine Corps General & the Iraqi power minister are ignored.



For a long time I thought I was one of the select few people that saw the obvious advantages of distributed energy in war torn Iraq. When power lines are being blown up by terrorists and "melted into ingots and sold" it doesn't make sense to use a centralized power system. This is especially true when the power grid is deteriorating at an alarming rate.




It seems some key officials in both Iraq and the US Military have had similar thoughts. From Amory Lovins:

Some of us have made three attempts at [bringing decentralized power to Iraq] and there's a fourth now under discussion. The first three attempts, the third of which was backed by the Iraqi power minister, were vetoed by the U.S. political authorities on the grounds that they'd already given big contracts to Bechtel, Halliburton, et. al to rebuild the old centralized system, which of course the bad guys are knocking down faster than it can be put back up.

A similar request was made by U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer. He's the top U.S. commander in western Iraq and back in September he sent the Pentagon a "Priority 1" request for "a self-sustainable energy solution" including "solar panels and wind turbines." The General says that as long as are transporting fuel for military generators US forces "will remain unnecessarily exposed" and will "continue to accrue preventable ... serious and grave casualties". Apparently the US spends only $200 million a year annually on fuel, but pays $3.2 billion each year on 20,000 active and 40,000 reserve personnel to transport it. Basically for every dollar of fuel you burn to produce electricity you spend $16 guarding it. That makes a $70 barrel cost $1,190. Keep in mind that the $3.2 billion is just to keep our operations going and does not include the cost of powering Baghdad. With operational costs this high it's no wonder we are having trouble keeping the lights on in Iraq. Despite this US officials insist on using crude oil power plants to generate electricity for Baghdad. One would think that if this much man power is required to protect a fuel supply line then reducing the amount of fuel we need to transport would be a top priority. This would seem especially important when the army is falling 2,150 recruits short of meeting a monthly recruiting goal and soldiers are suing the US army due to a stop-loss policy which keeps troops committed to their units for 18 months beyond their discharge date. I don't have any quantitative numbers on the challenges of securing the Baghdad oil-powered electrical plant supply lines and power grid but it's obvious our current techniques are not working.





Note: Updated the last post on this topic

Sources:
The Christian Science Monitor, In the Iraqi war zone, US Army calls for 'green' power, Mark Clayton, 07 Sep 2006
Gristmill, Green Is the New Camouflage, U.S. general in Iraq calls for renewable power
GristMill, All You Need Is Lovins, A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins, David Roberts, 26 Jul 2007
Military.com, Army Still Misses Recruiting Targets, Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2005
BBC, US troops sue over tours in Iraq, Tuesday, 7 December, 2004, 00:50 GMT

Iraq's Energy Heading to Oblivion: The Iraqi Minister's and a Top Marine Corps General's Call for Distributed Energy goes Ignored


Apparently electricity is becoming rather scarce in the energy rich Iraq. The Bush Administration is attempting their signature denial tactics:

As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

An hour a day of electricity is not going to be a whole lot of fun when the temperatures are reaching 118°F in Baghdad and 122°F in Nasiriya.



Of course maybe the US wouldn't have this problem if they picked a distributed energy supply that was a vastly more resistant to terrorist attacks such as wind, natural gas micro-generators (pic below) and solar.


I guess nobody noticed that:

natural gas bubbles up from underneath most [sic] every desert rock, the sun shines 300 days a year, and there's enough wind to whip up dust storms

The US has spent an average of $19,000 per Iraqi citizen since the evasion began and electricity is running at only a fraction of what it was under Saddam. The extra costs of wind and solar should be trivial compared to constantly rebuilding the perpetually bombed electrical grid that is being "melted into ingots and sold" by terrorists and looters. So why are we still insisting on using the highly vulnerable crude oil power plants to generate electricity? Billions of dollars are being spent on the electrical grid but the conditions are getting worse and worse. Maybe a system that is a little more distributed will help alleviate the situation. And maybe the people up top have known all of this they just don't want to take action. From Amory Lovins:

Some of us have made three attempts at [bringing decentralized power to Iraq] and there's a fourth now under discussion. The first three attempts, the third of which was backed by the Iraqi power minister, were vetoed by the U.S. political authorities on the grounds that they'd already given big contracts to Bechtel, Halliburton, et. al to rebuild the old centralized system, which of course the bad guys are knocking down faster than it can be put back up.

A similar request was made by U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer. He's the top U.S. commander in western Iraq and back in September he sent the Pentagon a "Priority 1" request for solar panels and wind turbines to augment traditional diesel generators. No changes in policy have been made.








h/t Tim Lambert, graph Eli Rabett

Source:
LAtimes, U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports The daily length of time that residents have power has dropped. The figure is considered a key indicator of quality of life. Noam N. Levey and Alexandra Zavis, July 27, 2007
Digg, The Shocking Cost of War: Every Single Iraqi Could Have Received $19,000
US Army corps of Engineers,Corps people help restore peace, normal life in Iraq
Iraq Electricity : Iraq allocates $2 billion for Ministry of Electricity next year
Thursday, December 28th 2006
New York Times, Iraq Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity, JAMES GLANZ, December 19, 2006
The Christian Science Monitor, Mark Clayton, 07 Sep 2006
Gristmill, Green Is the New Camouflage, U.S. general in Iraq calls for renewable power
GristMill, All You Need Is Lovins, A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins, David Roberts, 26 Jul 2007

Terrorsism: Another Reason To Support Alternative & Micro Energy

Apparently it's becoming damn near impossible to get electricity up in Iraq. This is from the NYT's:

Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the lines.And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold.

All of this means electricity is expensive both in monetary and human cost. To make matters even worse:

Electricity Ministry officials said they could think of no case in which saboteurs had been caught. Payments made to local tribes in exchange for security have been ineffective, electricity officials said.

So what does this mean for Iraqi's?

The attacks have an immediate impact on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Last week even the official United States State Department figures, which many Iraqis contend lean toward the optimistic side, said there was an average of 6.6 hours of electricity per day in Baghdad and 8.9 hours nationwide.

Before the war, Baghdad had 16 to 24 hours of power and the rest of Iraq 4 to 8 hours, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent United States federal office.

And then there is this suggestion from Coeruleus:

Considering that natural gas bubbles up from underneath most every desert rock, the sun shines 300 days a year, and there's enough wind to whip up dust storms, why hasn't anyone ever troubled themselves to attempt to establish some distributed power generation other than diesel generators--the fuel for which itself requires power to refine--in Iraq? Years after we toppled Saddam's regime?

Which if you think about it makes a lot of sense. If solar cells or wind turbines were on each roof top then it would be very difficult to take out the power. The terrorism resistance of alternative and distributed energy has been highlighted by several Nobel Laureates for some time. I have yet to see this tactic implemented.

Source:
New York Times, Iraq Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity, JAMES GLANZ, December 19, 2006