Iraqi Gas Lines
I had no idea this is what they were doing, but it is insane (via Marginal Revolution):
THE queue of angry motorists stretches for miles. Baghdad's petrol stations are drier this month than they have been since just after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some drivers wait for as much as 24 hours, sleeping in their vehicles. When told that there is no petrol, some have lost their tempers and started shooting. How, asks a furious driver, can an oil-producing country run out of fuel?
Ask an insurgent, and he will assure you that the American army steals the oil for its tanks. Others might blame the lack of capacity at Iraqi oil refineries or the fact that the insurgents keep blowing up the pipelines. But the most important reason is that the government has fixed the price of petrol at approximately zero"”barely one American cent a litre.
I wonder if the problem in the electic power sector is similar. See the post for the whole article, from the Economist.
