Los Angeles Times
September 13, 2004
BAIJI, Iraq — During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, two Tomahawk cruise
missiles slammed into the hulking power complex here, leaving dumpster-sized
transformers crumpled like balls of tissue paper.
The strike crippled
Iraq's largest source of electricity, cutting off almost 10% of the country's
power supply. It took two months and 23 days for Iraqi engineers to get the
plant running again.
During last year's war, the U.S. military
carefully avoided attacks on Iraq's electrical infrastructure, and the plant
escaped unscathed. After Baghdad fell, U.S. engineers rushed in with aid to
fix the damage from years of disrepair and a spasm of postwar looting.
Today, 17 months and $172 million later, the Baiji power plant — a vast
"Lawrence of Arabia" meets "Blade Runner" complex 125 miles north of Baghdad
— produces less than half the electricity it generated when it was built
two decades ago.
In the long, frustrating campaign to rebuild this
country, perhaps no task ha s been more difficult than turning on the
lights.
The trouble restoring Iraq's electrical system exemplifies the
failures of a larger reconstruction process still marked by tainted water
supplies, limited sewage treatment and curtailed construction of public
buildings. An effort that was supposed to provide jobs, stability and democracy
has instead produced a deep reservoir of confusion and anger that feeds the
country's deadly insurgency.
Although electricity was the foundation
of the rebuilding campaign, State and Defense department planners vastly
underestimated the time, money and effort needed to restore the country's power
grid, which had deteriorated far beyond their expectations under 12 years of
U.N. sanctions.
A review of the restoration effort shows that it was
beset by poor planning, inconsistent leadership, sabotage and deteriorating
security.
Today, the campaign is finally producing results, with power
generation increasing rapidly in recent weeks. "We are making progress," said
Tim Miller, a manager with San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. who is helping to
rebuild the plant. "It's just not as quickly as everyone would like."
The progress has been slowed by intrusive and haphazard U.S. oversight, sources
say. U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad placed enormous pressure on
their underlings, setting such high goals that engineers sometimes skipped
maintenance, ran generators harder than normal and gambled on untried techniques
to raise output.
A Pentagon decision to rely on private contractors to
do much of the rebuilding also slowed work. Rather than depend on Iraqis to
make quick fixes, the Pentagon decided to spend money on complex, big-ticket
infrastructure — a strategy that would meet long-term goals rather than
the nation's immediate needs, critics said.
Congress' insistence on
using the federal government's cumbersome procurement system also meant long
delays. Understaffed and overworked contracting officials compounded the prob
lem, U.S. officials in Iraq and Washington say.
At the same time, work
in Iraq was roiled by constantly changing leadership, vision and emphasis.
Since rebuilding began in April 2003, seven people have overseen the electricity
project — the equivalent of a new CEO every 2 1/2 months for one of the
most complicated and expensive tasks in Iraq.
"It was absolutely
horrendous," said Michel Gautier, head of the United Nations' Iraqi
infrastructure office. "We could never collaborate because of the continually
changing people. It was extremely inefficient and destructive."
Military mistakes exacerbated the situation. The failure to secure Iraq after
the March 2003 invasion permitted widespread looting of power plants and
electricity lines. Much of the $5.6 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds dedicated
to restoring Iraq's power is being used not to build new plants but to replace
what Iraqis stole.
Even more serious has been the insurgency. A wave
of guerrilla violence has crippled contractors' ability to work. Companies such
as Bechtel, Siemens and General Electric occasionally have had to suspend
operations, U.S. officials say. Iraqi workers have been targeted for
cooperating with the rebuilding effort. New transmission towers have been
destroyed as soon as they were erected.
"We're just not making progress
to the extent we could if it weren't for the security issue," said Mike Moseley,
a retired Tennessee Valley Authority executive who is the senior U.S.
consultant on electricity to the Iraqis. "We're moving forward, but not in a
sea of water. We're in a sea of molasses on a cold, winter day."
Even
today, the U.S. has not reached the goal set by L. Paul Bremer III, the former
head of the U.S.-led occupation authority, to produce 6,000 megawatts of power a
day by June 1. By comparison, California has about 50% more people than Iraq
but produces up to eight times as much electricity, about 45,000 megawatts at
peak summer demand.
Iraq's electrical production tops out at 5,300
megawatts — higher than peak generation in the closing days of Saddam
Hussein's regime, but far below the estimated 7,200 megawatts needed to fulfill
the rapidly growing demand.
Still, officials say the U.S.
reconstruction project is substantially improving the reliability of Iraq's
power system.
"Everybody wants simple answers, and there aren't any,"
said Dick Dumford, perhaps the longest-serving member of the group of U.S.
engineers and experts who have labored to get Iraq's electricity running again.
"We did our best. Everybody did their best."
Power Failure
Just days before the war began, a worker at the Baiji plant went home
without shutting off a fuel-supply valve in one of the main boilers.
The boiler exploded, blowing out inch-thick steel walls, bending beams and
turning the generator into a ruined hunk of metal that was incapable of
producing electricity and tremendously difficult to repair. It
was a sign of the tro uble ahead.
Many State Department and Pentagon
officials involved in the initial planning for war assumed that the electricity
sector would generally need only repairs and rehabilitation because the military
had avoided infrastructure targets.
But as government officials and
contractors slowly fanned out after major combat ended, they found that 12 years
of sanctions had created a far worse situation than they had realized.
No electric plants had been built in Iraq since the 1980s, and most of the
existing ones were nearing the end of their normal life cycles.
Desperately needed maintenance had been put off for years as Iraqi engineers
tried to coax more power out of aging systems. The network was a nightmare
patchwork of technology, meshing systems from Italy, France, Germany, China,
Russia, Yugoslavia, India, Japan and other countries.
Even before the
U.S. invasion, Iraq's power production had declined from about 7,000 megawatts
in the early 1990s to 4,400 megawatts. Baiji, built in 1983, was a prime
example of the disrepair. Its ancient, 300-foot smokestacks belch a constant
black smudge against the bright blue sky and rolling brown hills around it. The
transformers that loaded power onto the national grid had gone without service
for a decade.
"It was like a 1970 Chevelle car engine. You buy it
used. When you pull the engine and take off the cylinder heads, you figure out
there was a lot more damage than you ever realized," said Maj. Erik Stor,
operations chief for the Army Corps of Engineers' Restore Iraqi Electricity
project.
While assessing the damage, the electrical team, headed by the
U.S. Agency for International Development, was blindsided by a far more serious
challenge: looting, sabotage and violence.
Insurgents tumbled
transmission towers like dominos. When U.S. assessment teams arrived in Iraq
shortly after the invasion, about 30 towers had been knocked down. By
September, that had grown to 600 towers, substantially cutting into Iraq 's
ability to send power across its grid.
Theft was rampant, and Baiji
was hit hard. Bandits in search of copper stole more than 50 miles of
high-tension wire between the plant and Baghdad, cutting off the complex from
the country's largest population center.
"We buy [electrical
parts], the next day they're gone," Jim Guy, a USAID engineering specialist,
said during a conference in Washington. "We have to guard everything that's
loose, or else it will be gone in the morning."
With the
U.S. facing a problem far out of proportion to its expectations, summer 2003
turned out to be disastrous. Blackouts were common. Tempers rose with the
temperature.
U.S. officials responded by deciding to distribute
electricity more evenly. Under Hussein, Baghdad received up to 23 hours of
power a day while other regions suffered. That summer, everyone had three hours
on, three hours off.
The backlash in the capital was immediate. To
many, life seemed better under H ussein.
By late summer, the battle
against the foreign presence exploded. The United Nations building was blown
up, prompting the departure of its workers. U.S. troops were ambushed
frequently.
Team 4400
At the end of August, Army Gen.
John Abizaid, head of the war effort, called the major players together at
Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
"Why is this screwed up?
What we are doing is failing, and the Iraqis are getting damn unhappy," Abizaid
told representatives from the electricity, oil and communications sectors,
according to senior coalition officials who were present.
The money that
soon came pouring in was ample evidence of how badly war planners had
shortchanged the initial reconstruction effort.
USAID had set aside
only $229 million of a $680-million contract with Bechtel to rebuild the power
system.
By November, Congress had increased the funding to $5.6
billion — not only for rehabilitating old plants but also for bu ilding
new ones.
In the summer, the Coalition Provisional Authority had
dedicated five people to the power effort. By the fall, that staff had
surpassed 50.
Steve Browning, an Army Corps of Engineers official, led
the charge. Bremer assigned Browning to increase Iraq's generation capacity to
the prewar level of 4,400 megawatts by the end of September. Team 4400, as it
came to be known, often worked from dawn to well past midnight. The team paired
Iraqi plant operators with U.S. power experts. It created a new power station
police force and focused on boosting output.
Each night, Browning and
his team gathered to review the day's performance. The pressure was
enormous.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz "would say to me,
'I saw your power generation chart today' every day," Browning said. "When
people saw there was a drop, they'd say, 'Oh, you failed today.' "
Generators were breaking down as they were pushed to their limits. One plant
caught fire, going offline for two weeks.
"It was a soap opera," Dumford
said. " 'Did it go up or down? The White House is waiting.' " Then, on Oct.
6, just days after the deadline had passed, Iraq's power production hit 4,518
megawatts.
After midnight, the power team members gathered around a
table at the Rashid Hotel in the middle of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone and
bought one another drinks.
Someone lighted a candle, placed it on the
table and said: "To the people who turned the lights back on in
Baghdad."
"It was one of the most exciting nights of my life," Dumford
said.
Race to Build
A month after the celebration,
Congress passed an $18.4-billion aid package for Iraq. The largest chunk was
dedicated to restoring electricity.
The money, though, came with a
caveat: All work had to be thrown open to competition among private companies
or Congress would have to be informed.
Both Republican and Democrats
hailed the stipulation as a way to control Iraq's balloon ing costs. But the
process imposed peacetime contracting rules amid a rapidly changing dynamic of
conflict.
Through last fall and this spring, reconstruction officials
struggled to bid out thousands of projects, including power plants, dams and
police equipment. Because of the volume of contracts and the backlog, deadlines
were pushed back from November to January to February.
"Think about
trying to build Disney World in downtown Memphis in the United States in less
than 90 days," said Amy Burns, a spokeswoman for retired Rear Adm. David Nash,
the head of the effort. "You couldn't do it any faster than we did."
By
spring this year, the electricity project had had a series of leaders, each of
whom stayed for two to three months — part of the coalition authority's
normal rotation.
However, the constant changes baffled U.S., Iraqi and
U.N. officials alike. Goals and priorities were in flux. There was
duplication of efforts.
Officials "would come and spend five week s
getting to know the place, then four weeks of work and then three weeks getting
ready to go back home," the U.N.'s Gautier said of his contacts with top CPA
officials.
At the same time, CPA contracting officials were overwhelmed
by the workload. The electricity team, facing Bremer's target of 6,000
megawatts by June 1, had no more than three contracting officers trying to bid
work for $100 million in parts. Orders that were supposed to have been placed
in November backed up for months. Even now, nearly a year later, replacement
parts have not arrived.
"It was a pipe dream to think that the CPA was
going to award and mobilize construction contracts from coalition countries as
fast as Adm. Nash wanted them to be," Browning said. "It was just going to
take longer."
In the spring, just as the contracts were finally being
awarded, the situation on the ground got worsened.
At the end of
March, four private security guards working for Blackwater USA were ambushed and
slain in Fall ouja. Their bodies were mutilated, and two of the corpses were
strung from a bridge. A few days later, insurgents struck a Halliburton Co.
convoy carrying supplies to troops. Four Halliburton employees died, two remain
missing and one escaped.
After these events, many contractors panicked.
Shippers refused to cross the border into the country. Iraqi workers stopped
showing up at job sites.
The surge in violence did not stop the
reconstruction effort, but it slowed it. When June 1 arrived, Iraq was
producing about 4,300 megawatts a day — far from the 6,000-megawatt
goal.
Today, the Baiji plant is slowly returning to life.
Inside, the plant thrums with noise. Warmed by the scorching sun and nearby
boilers, the complex is like a huge sauna. Bechtel is rehabilitating the six
generators; only one remains out of commission.
Across a field of baked,
brown earth from the main plant, Washington Group International is installing,
at U.S. taxpayer expense, eight mobile gener ators the size of semitrucks and
repairing four gas-fired generators that draw fuel from a nearby oil
refinery.
After more than a year of struggle and delay, most of the
plant's new and rehabilitated generators are expected to be up and running by
November.
It's a trend mirrored throughout Iraq, where the U.S. is
adding generation capacity faster than ever now that contractors have finished
designing new plants and begun constructing them.
'We Are
Behind'
It still isn't enough.
"In general, we are behind.
We are 100% behind," Electricity Minister Ayham Sameraei said in an interview.
"The growth is crazy right now."
The irony is not missed: Iraq's
continuing shortage of electricity is a symbol of its success.
As the
economy has slowly recovered, Iraqis have gone on a spending spree. New air
conditioners, refrigerators, microwave ovens and other power-hungry appliances
are for sale everywhere as Iraqis dole out long-hoarded cash and the consumer m
arket opens wider than under Hussein.
At the same time, the
reconstruction effort is beginning to have an effect. Small shops are open.
Homes are being built. State-owned enterprises shuttered during the war are
functioning again.
All the rebuilding has fueled a surge in
demand.
"It makes our job that much harder," said Stor, the operations
chief for the Army Corps project.
Another concern is the distribution
system, which delivers power to consumers. Under Hussein, the system of
substations and local connections was neglected. A recent Bechtel report called
the system "precarious," warning that it could fail at current demand.
Other problems await attention. Iraqi engineers accustomed to rushing from one
crisis to the next must be trained for the long-term planning and maintenance
that characterize advanced power plant operations. New Iraqi managers, used to
a top-down structure, must learn to make their own decisions.
Schooled
in the hard lessons of the last 17 months, U.S. and Iraqi officials expect it
to take three to five years to make the entire system fully functional and
sustainable.
When it is done, however, both sides hope that the
project's impressive scale will be understood — and appreciated — by
Iraqis.
"If we achieve our goals, most of our other problems will be
solved," said Wafi Mnadi, the Electricity Ministry's director of thermal power
plants. "For our people, electricity is life."