The area around Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and main port, accounts for as much as 80 percent of the country’s oil production. It has emerged as Iraq’s best hope for stability and prosperity as it prepares to sell off its top undeveloped oil fields to foreign companies at an auction next month. Of the five largest fields that will be bid on, four are in or around Basra.


Despite the riches trapped below its oil fields, though, this city of three million is among Iraq’s poorest places.

People in neighborhoods within a few miles of fields with so much oil that it floats atop the surface in huge black pools live amid mud and feces. Carts pulled by overworked donkeys compete with cars for space on streets. Childhood cancer rates are the highest in the country. The city’s salty tap water makes people ill. And there is more garbage on the streets than municipal collectors can make a dent in.

The hundreds of thousands who live in the villages around the fields all dream of finding oil work, but that is unlikely. Those who apply are almost always told they lack the education or experience for oil work. But they believe that their only real deficiency is a lack of connections and money for bribes.