Explosive Vetoes

The oil law that is being debated and bandied about in Baghdad is irrelevant until all of the veto players are either invited to the discussion or their respective vetoes are eliminated. And when the minimal effective veto is a little bit of knowledge and less than ten pounds of plastic explosives in a country that is awash in both knowledge and Semtex, the veto players will be sticking around and exercising their ability to shut change off.

Via Monsters and Critics:

In another development, an explosion along an oil pipeline that extends from the northern Kirkuk oilfields to Bayji refineries caused damage to both the line and another parallel pipeline between Iraq and Turkey.

The ensuing fire affected only a section of the Kirkuk-Bayji pipeline which runs over River Tigris, but caused an oil leak and black fog in the area.

Firefighters struggled to contain the damage, a source in the local oil industry said. The explosion is expected to result in halt to production at Bayji refineries, which reportedly supply more than half of Iraq's oil products.

According to another source in water department at Salahaddin, the explosion caused oil to seep into the Tigris and causing water stations in the area to be temporarily closed down.

The water supply up to 40 kilometres south of the explosion site was affected, the source added.

This attack is a double delegimitizing attack against an already uncredible government. Gasoline, heating and cooking fuel prices will either increase or even longer lines will form to chase fewer supplies. At the same time, the revenue-cost equation gets even worse, as the government is able to collect less on exports as exports will have decreased while simeaultaneously buying more imported refined fuels and incurring the cost of shipping these new supplies up either the Southern route, or through insurgent infested Anbar where they'll take a good size cut.

Throw in the fact that clean water is in doubt for a signficant stretch of the settled zones of Iraq, and this is more of the same for the micro-bands achieving their objectives.