A shortage of gas in the cities of Erbil and Duhok has caused the price of a gas canister to rocket from 7,500 dinars ($6.30) to anywhere between 15,000-50,000 dinars. Some were left queuing up to refill gas canisters used to cook and heat their homes for over an hour on Sunday.
“We have been waiting in the line for an hour and a half now. Only God knows when it will be our turn to refill our gas canister,” one queuer in Erbil told Rudaw.
“Before, you could refill your gas can for 8,000, 500 dinars more expensive than the government price, but that is no longer the case. I have brought my can, and it [a refill] is for 15,000 and I have to wait for my turn.”
“There is no wood, no kerosene [for heating fuel]. What do we do?” asked one woman in line.
A man waiting in a Duhok queue told Rudaw the gas crisis “reminds us of 1991”, when UN sanctions on Iraq left its population impoverished.
'Monopolists and mafias'
The United Arab Emirates-based Dana Gas owns the Khor Mor field in Chamchamal, where 1,000 tons of natural gas is produced daily. Dana Gas puts the gas up for tender annually, for a domestic company to buy and sell back to KRG public gas canister factories and to private factories.
The KRG soon published a statement in response to the shortage, claiming that “monopolists and mafias" in Chamchamal, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) controlled zone, had been blocking flow of gas to the capital and Duhok.
“Responding to the calls of the people of the Kurdistan for transparency in government affairs, the ninth cabinet has started reorganizing all the contracts of companies within the framework of law and regulations providing them via tenders,” read a statement from Jotiar Adil, spokesperson of the KRG.
“Within this framework, the matter of the transfer of kerosene produced by Dana Gas to the Region's provinces…was given to a company through a tender,” the statement read.
Sorgas Gas and Petroleum Trading “won the tender and they were scheduled to start work from the beginning of the new year, but a few influential individuals in Garmiyan and Sulaimani prevented them from doing their work and not allowing them to transfer the gas supply shares of Erbil and Duhok provinces’, leading to a kerosene price hike in the two provinces,” Adil added.
“Over the past two days, an armed force committed violence against the company”, the statement added.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) parliamentary bloc described the "known armed force" that prevented kerosene transfer from Chamchamal as those who "confiscate the kerosene of people in broad daylight."
However, Chamchamal’s mayor dismissed the claims, saying there are no issues in kerosene production and transfer from the area to other parts of the Kurdistan Region.
"As a governmental body, we are dealing with the matter of the production and transfer of kerosene and any other subject in our region in accordance with law," Remek Ramazan told PUKmedia on Sunday.
"In the past the Golden Jaguar Company used to distribute kerosene. The distribution is now being carried out by another company after they won the tender in an open auction," he added.
A source from Golden Jaguar confirmed to Rudaw English that they had no involvement in the halt of kerosene transfer from Chamchamal to Erbil and Duhok.
“We have handed over the transfer process to Sorgas Company and no longer have a connection with it,” the source told Rudaw English.
'Property of the people'
Appearing as a guest on Rudaw TV’s “Barpirsyar”, Bakhtiar Abdullah, director of KRG-owned Erbil Gas Factory stood by the government’s claims, but criticized the entire process of gas production.
“All of us are at fault here. Kurdistan has enough gas for itself. This has to be resolved,” Abdullah told Rudaw.
With the intervention of the Kurdistan Region’s Prime Minister, Erbil’s Governor and other high ranking officials intervened, the problem has been resolved, Abdullah added.
“From today on, the company will start working, and all types of protection have been provided to it. Whoever wishes to violate their work will be held to account.”
Part of Erbil’s 220 ton daily share has already arrived in the province, Abdullah said. He criticized the decision to put natural gas up for tender during winter, when gas demand is at its peak.
Barpirsyar guest Hardi Osman, owner of the private-sector, Erbil-based Hawraman Gas Factory told Rudaw that “it is about a week to ten days that our factory has not been working because we haven’t had gas”.
“Any gas [canister] that has been sold has been sold for 6,500 dinars. The price may have gone up to 7,000, but it never went beyond that,” Osman said.
Both guests proposed that the Kurdistan Regional Government buy gas directly and hire a transportation company for its distribution, with Osman arguing that the gas was the “property of the people, of us”.
