If The Daura Refinery Could Speak (Part II)
Hello there, Noam here. Today, I'm sharing the second of a two-part series on Iraq’s Daura oil refinery. If you missed the first part, you can find it here. And as always, feel free to share comments and thoughts. Thank you for reading THE CHOKEPOINT.
… Then came the Gulf War in 1991. Daura was burning.
“Night Turned into Day”
As US-led coalition forces bombed Iraq, Daura was among the sites that were hit several times. According to the former director general of the refinery, Dathar al-Khashab, “they used all what they had of military hardware.” The bombing campaign caused heavy damage at the refinery and fires kept burning for 21 days1. Around 17 locations in the refinery were hit and 22 large storage tanks full of oil products were destroyed. Given that a power plant in the city was also targeted, the fires at the Daura refinery were the only source of light for the Iraqi capital, al-Khashab recalled. “Because of Daura’s fires, Baghdad’s night turned into day.”
The refinery fires kept raging for weeks. Al-Khashab and his workers stayed on the job, though, cooling down the storage tanks that were spared during the bombardment and salvaging the wreck. The firefighting system at Daura was installed underground in the 1950s; for this reason, critical infrastructure was not damaged. But in an interview aired in 1991, Osama Abdul Razaq Hamadi al-Hitti, the Iraqi oil minister at the time, acknowledged the extent of the damage: “The destruction in the refining sector exceeded that which other sectors saw.” Daura, along with other major refineries, were all severely impaired. In January of that year, a British military spokesman said that Iraqi refining capacity had been reduced by half. Notwithstanding the wartime destruction — and heavy sanctions imposed on Iraq — the refineries subsequently underwent repairs. By 1994, Daura was operating at an expanded rate of 100,000 barrels per day (bpd)2.
Al-Khashab remembers in detail how he led reconstruction efforts:
“While we were fighting the fires, we had a committee of engineers counting the losses. When a ceasefire was announced, I had already prepared a list of the damages. We prepared a report for the oil minister at that time, detailing what materials and equipment Daura needed to start reconstruction.”
The management needed around $6 million to purchase the material and equipment. This, however, was impossible as a result of sanctions and financial constraints. So, the workers were on their own:
“After the oil ministry had told us that we had to bring the refinery back into operation using our capabilities, we sat down and started thinking what to do with a burned or damaged pump for instance. Gradually we concluded that everything was able to be repaired. We even produced mechanical seals, which is a complex process. Of course, the life extension was less than the original, but this did not matter. The most important thing was to get the refinery back to work.”
Around 2,500 technicians, engineers, and workers from other government institutions labored around the clock and over two shifts to repair Daura. “We returned Daura back to work in 45 days,” he told me as he narrated events that are over three decades old. “The sanctions, despite the damage they inflicted, gave rise to an inventive generation.”
Oil expert Ruba Husari of Iraqoilforum.com visited Iraq in 2000. She shared with me her assessment of Daura at the time:
“… [T]hey had already managed to keep it going even under the long years of sanctions by essentially cannibalizing parts from other facilities or smuggling material and chemicals.”
Saad Naji, an Iraqi businessman and a founding member of the Iraq Business Council, remembers how Daura sought out parts wherever they could. “My company and several other companies supplied the Daura refinery with equipment, mostly spare parts through the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme towards the end of the 1990s.” The Oil-for-Food Programme was established in April 1995 to facilitate Iraqi sales of oil “to pay for humanitarian supplies.” In 1998, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1153, which requested “that the Secretary-General appoint a group of oil experts to look into Iraq’s oil producing capacity and the need for spare parts and equipment.”3
Against all odds, Daura roared back to life.
The Fortress
When the US-led invasion began in March 2003, Dathar al-Khashab reduced production at Daura. Later, when US forces arrived in Baghdad, the refinery was shut down and its workers were struggling to secure the refinery:
“Before the arrival of the US forces to Daura, there was strong protection around the refinery, from different security apparatuses. But when US forces started advancing towards the city, they all suddenly disappeared.”
As a result, he had to improvise. Al-Khashab had Kalashnikov rifles in storage. He distributed the weapons to workers who were living in housing units next to the refinery, specifically those with military training. “I told the workers: you are not only defending Daura but also your people. If anything happens to the refinery, that will be the end.” At this point, al-Khashab and his fellow workers were battling looters. They had to react quickly and effectively.
“When some looters entered Daura, the workers ambushed and kept them at the refinery,” al-Khashab recalled while releasing a heavy laugh. Knowing that their families may come looking for them and potentially even seek revenge, al-Khashab made sure the captive looters were treated well. They were served tea, food, and cigarettes and on top of that a lecture from al-Khashab:
“I told them: You came to Daura, but this refinery is yours. Had I allowed you to steal its equipment you would have set it on fire. And when tomorrow comes, and you wanted from me gasoline and diesel, this refinery will make it available. But if you burn the refinery, will the Americans then give you gasoline? They were then released, and I addressed them one last time, saying: “Go to your families and tell them that there is a person at the refinery— who did not shoot at us but only fired warning shots in the air—he said that if anyone comes back to the refinery, he will shoot them directly.”
Then came the Americans.
When the Americans reached southern Baghdad, al-Khashab received a call that there were tanks at an oil distribution company next door. The Daura staff knew they had to hide all weapons to avoid being shot by US forces. There was no intention to target Daura, al-Khashab told me, so he managed to convince a US commander that his forces had to protect the facility from looters, highlighting the importance of the refinery. And it worked. In the early days of the war, “there was no leadership at the [oil] ministry,” Ruba Husari told me, so al-Khashab “had to improvise and keep the refinery going even though supply of crude was affected.”
Husari arrived in Baghdad in April 2003, a few days after the occupation of Baghdad. Daura was among the first places she visited: “I saw the [refinery’s] flare from afar and knew that Dathar was still there.” When Husari arrived, it was mayhem. Citizens were fighting to obtain oil products, particularly cooking gas which was in short supply. “There were armed people on the walls and American soldiers were standing there watching the chaos,” she recalled.
Daura had a capacity to process around 110,000 bpd of crude oil in the early 2000s. In 2003, three half-century-old crude oil units were still in place according to Gary Volger, author of Iraq and the Politics of Oil: An Insider’s Perspective. Due to Daura’s aging technology, its gasoline and diesel products made only 50 percent of the processed crude oil, with the rest being heavy fuel oil.
Vogler, a former senior oil consultant to US forces, remembers Daura and al-Khashab very well:
“Daura supplied gasoline and diesel products to the Baghdad area and so it was very important from that standpoint. However, it became quite evident to me that Daura was the leader of anything in the refining sector. It had the best people and the best leadership,” he told me.
In his book, Vogler mentions how in July 2003 two crude oil pipelines feeding Daura were attacked in northern Iraq, disrupting supplies to the civilian population as well as the US military. The reasoning behind the attack only became clear to Vogler several years later thanks to al-Khashab: “The attackers were motivated by stories in the Baghdad Arabic press about the Americans sending Iraqi crude oil to Israel,” he told me. This was the story of the oil agenda that called for reopening the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline, which some US officials were advocating. The Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline was in operation between 1934 and 1948, carrying crude from Kirkuk to the Mediterranean, before becoming inoperable following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. “After 19 years and much research, I still do not understand how the US mainstream media missed the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline story—probably the most important Iraq story of the summer of 2003. The Israeli press covered it and I have been told the Baghdad Arabic press translated the Israeli press into Arabic, but no mention in the western press. I don’t understand it.”4
Indeed, Americans and non-Americans alike live “in a world of spin.”
The Workers
After the invasion, David Bacon, a reporter and photographer focusing on labor issues, went to Baghdad with a member of the San Francisco longshore union to meet with workers at different industrial facilities, including Daura. Labor unions were starting to come out from hiding, hoping to resume their activities now that Saddam Hussein had been removed. But they continued to face suppression due to a Saddam-era law banning unions that remained in effect under the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Iraqi workers were wary of attempts to privatize the Iraqi economy and the possibility of layoffs:
“We wanted to see the conditions of the workers and come back to the U.S. to explain to U.S. workers those conditions, and that the Iraqi workers were being threatened by the occupation’s privatization efforts.”
The photo below was taken by Bacon during his visit. Like many other workers at other factories, at that time, those with jobs at Daura labored in exhausting conditions for 11- and 13-hour shifts and were paid only $60 a month. There was no overtime pay. “The coalition forces control the finances, and our wages,” Bacon quoted Detrala Beshab, the president of Daura’s union at the time, as saying. They nevertheless toiled away.
The Following Years—and Now
When Daura was built in the early 1950s, Baghdad looked completely different. This photo, taken by Jack Percival of the IPC Photographic Unit and published in 1955, shows part of the Iraqi capital.
The government initially chose the Daura site because it was close to Baghdad and “conveniently situated to the banks” of the Dijlah river, which made is easy to transport oil products and secure water for cooling purposes. At that time, around 40 percent of Daura’s oil products were consumed in Baghdad, and according to Iraq Petroleum “it was agreed that Baghdad should be the center of a nation-wide distribution system for the products of the refinery.”
But Daura is no longer what it used to be. The whole country has undergone change, and developments5 since the 1980s have had a heavy and irreversible impact.
Today, the refinery is situated in the heart of a densely populated area, where it contributes significantly to air and water pollution. Salman Khairalla, an Iraqi environmental activist, raised concerns about the refinery in the past years.
Khairalla was born and raised in the Daura neighborhood. In 2018, he co-authored a report titled “Tigris River Pollution in Baghdad: Challenges and Recommendations,” published by Save The Tigris, which throws light on the role of Daura in polluting the Dijlah. As an example, the report cites an engineer at the refinery who claims that wastewater carrying “toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and cadmium” ends up in the river. Daura, along with other industrial facilities, is also the source of air pollution in the area, Khairalla told me. The satellite image below from Planet Labs PBC shows the smoke emitted from both the refinery and a nearby power plant. It spreads out over residential areas.
When I reached out to Wim Zwijnenburg, a Humanitarian Disarmament Project Leader for PAX, who has worked on environmental issues in Iraq, he noted the risks such smoke could pose to civilians in nearby communities. “The level of air pollution from particulate matter coming from the flaring and other process[es] could have serious public health risks for nearby communities,” he told me. Zwijnenburg pointed out that emissions of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and ammonia “are very common around these refineries,” adding that the location of the refinery implies that “people living in the area, as well as refinery workers, are expected to face sustained exposure from air pollution.” Daura exacerbates the already poor air quality in Baghdad.
Compounding these problems are official sensitivities surrounding Daura. “We have problems when it comes to information transparency in Iraq,” Khairalla, who is also the executive manager of the environmental organization Humat Dijlah, told me. He has been forced to leave Iraq due to his work on environmental issues.
Although there have been calls to relocate or decommission Daura, the decision does not appear to be an easy one to make. In 2021, the oil ministry announced the addition of an isomerization unit and a reforming unit at the refinery with a capacity of 10,000 bpd to convert naphtha to higher-value gasoline blendstock, as well as another unit and storage tanks. These upgrades are part of efforts to halt imports of costly oil products6.
Dathar al-Khashab, who spent over 30 years at Daura, told me that instead of decommissioning the refinery, “huge efforts should be undertaken to implement various measures, and probably costly ones… to improve the operational and environment-related conditions.” But some, including Saadallah al-Fathi, have reservations. “I say let us keep the beautiful memory of the Daura refinery instead of it turning into a source of wastefulness and harm,” he writes in his aptly titled chapter: “The Time Has Come for the Knight to Rest.”7
Despite the damage, no workers were killed. “When the bombing started,” al-Khashab told me, “I ordered my staff to head to the shelters at the Daura refinery, especially when we used to receive a warning of an upcoming strike.”
Vogler’s book cannot be overlooked in any research on the US invasion, the consequences of which continue to afflict Iraq.
In addition to the impact of previous conflicts, the spread of ISIS in northern Iraq in 2014 affected Kirkuk crude oil supplies to Daura.
But this is unlikely to happen. Iraq will almost certainly continue to remain a net importer of gasoline and gasoil through 2030. In 2020, I published an article on Iraq’s refining sector and its challenges.
Saadallah al-Fathi’s latest book, published in Arabic: من برج التكرير ثانية: ذكريات، كتابات ومواقف
مرحبا علي، شكرًا على اهتمامك بالبحث الذي نشرته عن مصفى الدورة. بامكانك استخدام المعلومات التي تفيد دراستك مع ذكر عملي كمصدر للمعلومات. شكرًا مجددا.
تحياتي
Thanks for this , I was in the middle of all this , what a night it was when Daura was bombed , I will never forget the fires surrounding us and yet no one left and everyone was helping the fire fighters , by the way it was bombed twice the second time after a couple of days , but also no one was hurt . Lots of stories to tell about that night and those days .
Nahidh kashmoula
Electrical engineer at the time