IRAQ - Oil Ministry To Protect Pipelines.

Battered by constant sabotage, the Iraqi Oil Ministry has deployed a new 14,000-member security force, has begun paying tribal leaders to guard pipelines and plans to double its fleet of reconnaissance aircraft. Oil Ministry spokesman Assim Jihad on Sept. 5 said: "When these pipelines were laid decades ago, no one then thought that saboteurs will damage them".

Though similar measures have been tried in the past, efforts by oil officials to make pipelines more secure have taken on a renewed urgency in recent weeks, in hopes of safeguarding revenue that makes up almost 95% of Iraq's budget.

Insurgents have repeatedly attacked pipelines in hopes of destabilising the government and hampering reconstruction efforts. No longer satisfied with spectacular attacks on major lines, militants have also hit smaller, less vital pipelines - a move which gets oil workers to be constantly fighting to merely keep the fires out and retain the status quo.

On Sept. 3, insurgents detonated explosives in what authorities described as one of the worst sabotage attacks in northern Iraq since the US-led invasion. In the previous week, a sabotage attack on a cluster of about 20 oil pipelines in southern Iraq cut exports from the key oil producing region for several days.

Last April, suicide boat attacks targeted offshore terminals in southern Iraq and sparked fears that oil tankers could be targets, but concern has centred mainly on the inland infrastructure.

Jihad said the Oil Ministry now was paying ID3 bn a month to tribal leaders to protect pipelines in their areas. But even oil officials acknowledge they can do little with the vast tracts of uninhabited desert where many lines are attacked. "We cannot put a security man every 10 kilometers", Jihad said.

Hoping to monitor the desert from the air more aggressively, Australian experts are training Iraqis on how to use eight SB7L-360 Seeker Reconnaissance aircraft. Jihad said the number of aircraft would double soon. The US military said they were also doing their part. But Maj. Jay Antonelli of the US Marine Corps. said "the individual companies which own the pipelines are ultimately responsible for the security of the pipelines".

Crude oil pumping through the northern line to Turkey's Mediterranean export terminal of Ceyhan was resumed on Sept. 8 with the use of substitute pipelines. A huge explosion on Sept. 2 damaged a section of the pipeline 60 km south-west of Kirkuk. The fire was extinguished late on Sept. 7 and repairs were completed the next morning. The flow rate has since been restored to it pre-explosion average of 400,000 b/d.

(A lattice of pipelines crisscrosses Iraq, where oil engineers are experts at looping various sections together to avoid bottlenecks).