"You've got the wrong technology for the fuel we're burning, the wrong technology being gas turbines," said Bill Thompson, generation manager for the Project and Contracting Office, a Defense Department reconstruction agency. "But we're here and this is what we've got."
In many cases, the fuel in question has been heavy fuel oil, a tarry byproduct of Iraq's primitive refineries that has wreaked havoc on the natural gas generators. One turbine installed by the U.S. at a cost of $40 million at the Baiji power complex in north-central Iraq already needs replacement.
"My concept as a layman [is that] we basically wrecked the unit" that needs replacing, said Dennis Karns, the Army Corps official heading the power sector.
The U.S. simply canceled other plants. It scrapped the Bechtel project, a planned power station near the Mansuriya fields in northeastern Iraq, because it feared it would take too long to build and cost too much, said officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Although the plant was never built, the U.S. paid Bechtel $69 million for drawing up plans, setting up a construction camp and buying two generators that were later installed elsewhere, USAID officials said. Bechtel also received $160 million to cover security and other unexpected costs in connection with other reconstruction projects.
"Starting about late 2004, we were finding out that security constrained our ability to build all the things we wanted to," said Heather Layman, a USAID spokeswoman.
A Bechtel official said the money was well spent since it paid for the gas-fired generators now in use elsewhere and provided the Iraqis with plant designs.
"Our position is it was a viable project," said the official, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.
The decision to rely so heavily on natural-gas-fired generators is a source of great frustration in the current Iraqi government. Shalash, the electricity minister, said the U.S. and the interim Iraqi government shared blame for not better understanding Iraq's power infrastructure.
"It was a combination of lack of knowledge and ... people who were from the outside who did not have experience," Shalash said. "All they were doing is signing contracts, buying turbines and not bringing electricity to people."
Another serious problem was the failure to charge private consumers for electricity, which a U.S. advisor called one of the worst mistakes of the U.S.-led occupation, according to a recent report by the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank.
