Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Financial Times
May 5, 2008 By Stephen Fidler, in Iraqi territorial waters
Up here, it is about oil. From two terminals stretching almost 20km (12 miles) out to sea in the northern Gulf, Iraq’s economic lifeblood – up to 1.8m barrels per day of it – flows into giant tankers that sit ever lower on the sea as they take on more crude oil.
Around the terminals, warships and other vessels from the US, UK and Australia, along with a renascent Iraqi coastal force, protect a 2,000-metre exclusion zone.
Fishermen in traditional wooden dhows equipped with sometimes powerful engines traverse the waters as they have for centuries, often crossing unintentionally over the borders that divide Iraq from Kuwait and Iran. When they and other boats approach the exclusion zone, they are warned and then confronted until they turn away.
Three wars have been fought in as many decades over the borders that in places are unresolved. Iran’s revolutionary guards have taken over a sunken Iraqi barge in the Shatt al-Arab waterway from which they watch coalition military activity.
Five kilometres away, from the war damaged Khor al-Amaya platform, the smaller of the terminals, British and Iraqi naval units watch them back. Not far from here, in March 2007, 15 British sailors and marines were seized by guard units and held for 12 days.
“It’s rather like the cold war,” says Commodore David Potts, the British naval officer who commands the northern Gulf taskforce that numbers about 10 ships. Cdre Potts recalls, as a young British naval officer, patrolling the River Elbe that divided East and West Germany until 1990.
The force is training Iraqi naval units to take over their role at some undetermined point. Until then, he says, the force’s job is “to try to achieve normalisation of maritime activity up there”.
With the world oil market sensitive to every small shift in oil supply and Iraq’s economy so heavily dependent on it, that means keeping the terminals open and averting the sort of attack that shut the 1.6m bpd al-Basra oil terminal for a day in April 2004.
These waters are, says one British naval officer, confined, hectic and crowded. It is an area of shallows, strong currents and sandstorms that blow fine choking dust and sharply reduce visibility, as they did last week.
Mines were sown here in the three conflicts. Although 1,300 Iraqi-laid mines were cleared since those wars, and those that may remain would not function in spite of retaining their explosive charges, parts of the zone off the Kuwaiti and Iraqi coasts are still designated mine hazard areas, deterring shipping and elevating insurance rates.
A mine-clearance force of 640 personnel and 22 ships from the US, UK and Kuwait, including symbolically an Iraqi patrol boat offering force protection, began an operation in March that seeks to end this designation and leave it formally safe for surface navigation.
Mine-hunting teams have scoured each of the 104 square nautical miles (357 sq km) of the seabed and the Khawr Abd Allah waterway – an area the size of Singapore – between three and five times.
“The good news is we have found nothing,” says Commander David Hunkin, who leads the force, in spite of sighting 2,000 objects that could have been mines but turned out to be harmless.
The teams use divers and new sonars and unmanned underwater vehicles that help them monitor shallow waters inaccessible to older technologies.
The teams await permission from Saudi Arabia to clear a small patch of its territorial waters, and should finish the operation by Thursday, leaving, says Cdr Hunkin, a small area of Iranian waters that they have not been invited to clear.
The next move is expected from the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff. Since his predecessor designated the zones as mine hazard areas, only he can redesignate them as former mined areas.
The mine clearance is part of a plan for economic regeneration of the northern Gulf, say the commanders.
In another development that some officers say might further help the area, Iraqi forces took over the port of Umm Qasr last month from militia groups.
The militias had extracted big payments to use the port, inhibiting trade there. Now that the Iraqi navy has taken charge, those payments should fall.
Yet, as last month’s intense fighting in Basra and continued tensions in US-Iranian relations have emphasised, the area is still a long way from normality. Asked last week if redesignating the mine-hazard areas would reduce insurance rates, London insurance underwriters said it would help ease concerns about shipping somewhat – but not substantially, given the area was still defined as a war zone for insurance purposes.
“Mines are a passive threat but there is an active threat, and active threats always take precedence over passive threats,” Neil Roberts of the Joint War Committee, a panel of London underwriters that assesses war threats, says.
May 5, 2008 By Stephen Fidler, in Iraqi territorial waters
Up here, it is about oil. From two terminals stretching almost 20km (12 miles) out to sea in the northern Gulf, Iraq’s economic lifeblood – up to 1.8m barrels per day of it – flows into giant tankers that sit ever lower on the sea as they take on more crude oil.
Around the terminals, warships and other vessels from the US, UK and Australia, along with a renascent Iraqi coastal force, protect a 2,000-metre exclusion zone.
Fishermen in traditional wooden dhows equipped with sometimes powerful engines traverse the waters as they have for centuries, often crossing unintentionally over the borders that divide Iraq from Kuwait and Iran. When they and other boats approach the exclusion zone, they are warned and then confronted until they turn away.
Three wars have been fought in as many decades over the borders that in places are unresolved. Iran’s revolutionary guards have taken over a sunken Iraqi barge in the Shatt al-Arab waterway from which they watch coalition military activity.
Five kilometres away, from the war damaged Khor al-Amaya platform, the smaller of the terminals, British and Iraqi naval units watch them back. Not far from here, in March 2007, 15 British sailors and marines were seized by guard units and held for 12 days.
“It’s rather like the cold war,” says Commodore David Potts, the British naval officer who commands the northern Gulf taskforce that numbers about 10 ships. Cdre Potts recalls, as a young British naval officer, patrolling the River Elbe that divided East and West Germany until 1990.
The force is training Iraqi naval units to take over their role at some undetermined point. Until then, he says, the force’s job is “to try to achieve normalisation of maritime activity up there”.
With the world oil market sensitive to every small shift in oil supply and Iraq’s economy so heavily dependent on it, that means keeping the terminals open and averting the sort of attack that shut the 1.6m bpd al-Basra oil terminal for a day in April 2004.
These waters are, says one British naval officer, confined, hectic and crowded. It is an area of shallows, strong currents and sandstorms that blow fine choking dust and sharply reduce visibility, as they did last week.
Mines were sown here in the three conflicts. Although 1,300 Iraqi-laid mines were cleared since those wars, and those that may remain would not function in spite of retaining their explosive charges, parts of the zone off the Kuwaiti and Iraqi coasts are still designated mine hazard areas, deterring shipping and elevating insurance rates.
A mine-clearance force of 640 personnel and 22 ships from the US, UK and Kuwait, including symbolically an Iraqi patrol boat offering force protection, began an operation in March that seeks to end this designation and leave it formally safe for surface navigation.
Mine-hunting teams have scoured each of the 104 square nautical miles (357 sq km) of the seabed and the Khawr Abd Allah waterway – an area the size of Singapore – between three and five times.
“The good news is we have found nothing,” says Commander David Hunkin, who leads the force, in spite of sighting 2,000 objects that could have been mines but turned out to be harmless.
The teams use divers and new sonars and unmanned underwater vehicles that help them monitor shallow waters inaccessible to older technologies.
The teams await permission from Saudi Arabia to clear a small patch of its territorial waters, and should finish the operation by Thursday, leaving, says Cdr Hunkin, a small area of Iranian waters that they have not been invited to clear.
The next move is expected from the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff. Since his predecessor designated the zones as mine hazard areas, only he can redesignate them as former mined areas.
The mine clearance is part of a plan for economic regeneration of the northern Gulf, say the commanders.
In another development that some officers say might further help the area, Iraqi forces took over the port of Umm Qasr last month from militia groups.
The militias had extracted big payments to use the port, inhibiting trade there. Now that the Iraqi navy has taken charge, those payments should fall.
Yet, as last month’s intense fighting in Basra and continued tensions in US-Iranian relations have emphasised, the area is still a long way from normality. Asked last week if redesignating the mine-hazard areas would reduce insurance rates, London insurance underwriters said it would help ease concerns about shipping somewhat – but not substantially, given the area was still defined as a war zone for insurance purposes.
“Mines are a passive threat but there is an active threat, and active threats always take precedence over passive threats,” Neil Roberts of the Joint War Committee, a panel of London underwriters that assesses war threats, says.