An Average Iraqi Re-Fuelling

  A few days earlier the old system of fuelling at fuel stations was changed, to understand the new system I have to talk about the old system. To shorten the length of the queue waiting to enter the station, which in some cases exceeds a kilometer in length. So the government decided to cut it in half by allowing only cars with even numbers to fuel in a day, and only cars with odd numbers to fuel in another, and by saying numbers I mean license numbers. But even this hasn't been of much help, because the queue always advances slowly, and it is known that the current production is not enough to meet up with the demand, along with other reasons, which don't have their place here. In most cases it is the duty of the National Guard personnel to make sure that only allowed cars enter the station.

  The new system works in another way, first it cuts the cars into two sections; old cars and new cars (called Manifest in Iraq), which defer in license color. Then cuts the Manifest into odd and even. So a driver can only fuel once each 3 days. Which is less than enough for people who drive a lot, like taxi drivers and people who travel long distances from their work to their homes. In other countries, the transit system could take some of the traffic, but the ineffectiveness of the transit system, along with the huge size of the city of Baghdad, makes it useless to use them for transportation.

  This leaves our friend, the Average Iraqi out of choices, but to stand the tall queue of hungry drivers for fuel, and become one of them, where it is your duty to ensure that you keep up and not let anyone take your place, then because the line moves slowly, it is not practical to keep the car running, so you shut it off, and many drivers will choose to push the car when the line moves, rather than start it up and lose precious fuel. Although it's very cheap in Iraq, but it is scarce, the price of one litter of benzene in Iraq is 100 dinars (6 cents) which is half the prize of a one minute call on cell phone, meaning that to fill up medium sized car you need 4000 dinars (2 dollars and 72 cents). But what good is it's cheapness if it is rare and hard to get. Some of the old cars, can be used to pump up fuel out of them, so let's say that someone fuels his old car from a fuel station, and then pulls up the fuel of of it, goes selling the benzene at prices that almost reach 10 times as the original ones at the fuel station, although it is strickly prohibited to sell fuel in the black market, but this is becoming a job for many Iraqis, and a good one if you are in a good place, since many drivers will remember where they can get fuel, and go there every time. Which means the those black sellers are going to be in the station 3 or 4 times a day, or more, taking places of other drivers by doing so.

  Note: This post has been emailed to my Email List subscribers.