Let’s Get Ready to Rummmmbbbullll!

The Jets vs. The Sharks

Ali vs. Frazier

Coke vs. Pepsi

Iraq vs. Iraq?

That’s exactly what’s going on these days in Iraq. You think the bickering in Congress is bad, you should see the struggle that’s going on for control in everyone’s favorite quagmire. Between the tribes and rival parties there, everyone wants to rule the place – and that makes it extremely difficult for the man who had been getting the job done for the past four years, Jabber el-Leaby.

Mr. Leaby has been the head of South Oil, the group in charge for getting the 2 billion barrel-per-day crude business out the door. It’s not easy to operate in a power vacuum. In much of the world, the logistics include getting the oil out of the ground and sending it via pipeline or tanker to its final destination. (I’m simplifying, of course)

Not in Mr. Leaby’s world.

In Iraq, getting the crude means having to negotiate through politicians, militias, warlords and heaven-knows what else to get the product to the export spigot. And for playing ringmaster of this circus, does Mr. Leaby get a bonus? Sure does…he gets ‘reassigned’ to some desk job in the oil ministry while the waring politicos try to wrest control of the country-owned oil business.

Here in the US, we only have to deal with small-fish-who-think-they-are-big-fish politicians and lobbyists for extremist environmental groups to get things done (again, no easy task), but it is a war of ideology and not a power-grab. I would rather see us focusing more on self-reliance rather than to hope these folks in Iraq get their house in order.

Does this sound like a good argument FOR increased domestic production? My scorecard reads ‘yes’.

Turf War Hits Iraq’s Oil Industry – WSJ.com