SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Iraqis queue for petrol in Mosul amid shortages
Mosul, Iraq, Feb 18 (AFP) Feb 18, 2022
Motorists in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul queued for hours on Friday to fill up their cars with petrol, with authorities blaming shortages on smuggling to the nearby Kurdistan region.

For the past week, long lines have formed at petrol stations in Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province, AFP journalists reported.

Soldiers were deployed in some stations to contain any violence, as tempers flared among motorists over the petrol shortage.

"Our lives are made of waiting in line. It has become a routine," taxi driver Abdel Khaliq al-Mousalli complained.

Shortages are frequent in Nineveh, where petrol is subsidised by the federal government and sells at around 500 Iraqi dinars per litre (0.33 US cents).

But in the neighbouring Kurdish autonomous region, petrol costs twice as much.

Nineveh governor Nejm al-Jibbouri said on Thursday that "information" suggested that the petrol shortage is due to "smuggling".

He told a local television network that he had instructed security forces to "tighten checks at checkpoints to prevent petrol from leaving the province".

Nineveh received more than two million litres of petrol a day, "the highest amount after Baghdad", Ihsan Mussa Ghanem, deputy head of the Iraqi agency in charge of distributing petroleum products, told AFP.

He said there was a "flow of fuel from areas where it is cheaper, in Nineveh province, to areas where it is more expensive, in Kurdistan".

"The price of oil in Kurdistan is 40 percent higher that in other provinces and that has put pressure on Nineveh, with many Kurdistan residents coming here to fill up," he added.

Iraq is the second largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The nearly 3.5 million barrels per day exported by the country account for more than 90 percent of its income.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
Interference to astronomy the unintended consequence of faster internet
Russian rocket puts Iran satellite into space: Iran media
Viasat unveils IoT Nano service for global low-power connectivity

24/7 Energy News Coverage
NASA's X-59 moves under its own power
Sri Lanka orders Singapore shipowner to pay US$1 bn over marine disaster
More than 80% of Tuvalu seeks Australian climate visa

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
New MachLab rocket test site launches UK into next phase of space engineering
Ukraine's anti-graft body says new bill restores independence
Iran meets European powers amid threats of UN sanctions snapback

24/7 News Coverage
Australia's mammal megafauna face long-term decline from extinctions and invasive species
Alien life clues may emerge from deep sea volcanic vents on Earth
Seismic signatures reveal fragmentation patterns of fireball meteoroids



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.