Iraqis queue for petrol in Mosul amid shortages

Motorists in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul queued for hours to fill up their cars with petrol, with authorities blaming shortages on smuggling to the nearby Kurdistan region.

For the past week, long lines have formed at petrol stations in Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province, A journalist reported.

Soldiers were deployed in some stations to contain any violence, as tempers flared among motorists over the petrol shortage.

"Our lives are made of waiting in line. It has become a routine," taxi driver Abdel Khaliq al-Mousalli complained.

Shortages are frequent in Nineveh, where petrol is subsidised by the federal government and sells at around 500 Iraqi dinars per litre (0.33 US cents).

But in the neighbouring Kurdish autonomous region, petrol costs twice as much.

Nineveh governor Nejm al-Jibbouri said that "information" suggested that the petrol shortage is due to "smuggling" towards Kurdistan.

He told a local television network that he had instructed security forces to "tighten checks at checkpoints to prevent petrol from leaving the province".

Nineveh received more than two million litres of petrol a day, "the highest amount after Baghdad", Ihsan Mussa Ghanem, deputy head of the Iraqi agency in charge of distributing petroleum products, said

"The price of oil in Kurdistan is 40 percent higher than in other provinces and that has put pressure on Nineveh, with many Kurdistan residents coming here to fill up," he said.

Iraq is the second largest producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The nearly 3.5 million barrels per day exported by the country account for more than 90 percent of its income.