Gunmen kidnap senior Iraq oil official in Baghdad

By Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Gunmen kidnapped a senior official of
Iraq’s oil ministry after he left work in Baghdad on Thursday,
police and ministry sources said on Friday, highlighting the
lawlessness still afflicting the vital sector.

The incident happened the same day U.S. troops killed
Iraq’s al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose demise the
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said would help
improve the country’s oil production, particularly in the
north.

The sources said Muthana al-Badri, Director General of
Iraq’s State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP), was on his way
home in the Sunni district of Adhamiya when gunmen in four cars
stopped his car and abducted him but set his driver free.

They said the kidnappers have not contacted the ministry or
Badri’s family.

The kidnapping highlights the challenges and dangers which
Iraq’s oil sector, hampered by violence and political
wrangling, face.

“The death of Zarqawi will lead to the reduction in the
level of violence and terrorist attacks and this will
definitely help to improve our production, particularly from
the northern fields and exports,” Shahristani told Reuters in
an interview in Istanbul on Thursday.

Badri, who the sources said is in his 60′s, has always
worked for SCOP. He became head of the company after Saddam
Hussein was toppled in 2003. Oil Ministry sources described him
as a “professional and energetic.”

“We call him the son of SCOP because he spent his life
there,” said an oil industry official.

SCOP is in charge of the oil projects for the ministry such
as building new refineries and pipelines.

Iraq, which sits on the world’s third largest oil reserves,
has been struggling to produce 2 million barrels per day, down
from nearly 3 million bpd before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Insurgents in Iraq have repeatedly sabotaged oil facilities
in the north to hampered efforts to boost crude oil exports,
the main source of government revenue. Exports in May were
around 1.5 million bpd, according to shipping sources.

Exports from the north are on hold due to sabotage which
has so devastated infrastructure there that oil exports from
the giant Kirkuk field are unlikely to resume until early next
year.