Into Basra City

It is just over a year since I was here last and I can already see signs of the city coming back to life. There are now far more shops open and shopkeepers are happy to display their wares on the pavements - on one street alone, I saw stalls selling furniture, white goods, kitchen equipment and fruit.

As a result of the lack of an effective system of local authority services, the side streets are full of rubbish - and there are vast pools of water between buildings full of rotting sewage. Power cuts are part of life here - at the moment householders can expect to get around eight hours of electricity a day. As the summer heat builds up and people start to increase the use of air conditioners and fans, they can expect no more than 4 hours of power a day.

And in the desert around Basra a billion cubic feet of natural gas is being flared off every day.

One Southern Oil Company representative refuted this number and told me "we only burn 450 million cubic feet of natural gas a day!"  ....so that is alright then...?

Note: the estimate of 1 bn cubic feet per day of flared natural gas was reported by Bloomberg