Graduates block oil company sites in Basra on fourth day of protests

BASRA — Graduates seeking oil sector jobs blocked several state oil company facilities in Basra on Wednesday, with security forces stopping them closing the main gate of the Basra Oil Company and detaining several demonstrators.

Video showed confrontations with security forces at the company’s Ziggurat complex. The action affected the Basra Oil Company, the Oil Products Distribution Company, the Iraqi Oil Tanker Company and the oil company’s cultural centre, according to information obtained by 964media.

Only a limited number of staff got in, through the legal department entrance, a source inside the company told 964media, with the Bab al-Zubair building closed. Employees were initially told to gather at the cultural centre, but protesters closed that too. The Bab al-Zubair building and the centre remained shut as riot police deployed.

The graduates — from engineering, petroleum and science disciplines — want contracts with the self-financed companies under the Oil Ministry, arguing those firms can hire from their own revenues without waiting for federally funded positions. It is the fourth day of protests. They began on Sunday outside the Basra Oil Company, where video showed Law Enforcement Forces confronting demonstrators who said force was used against them. An open-ended sit-in was declared on Monday outside the oil company and the tanker company, with chants of “No, no to marginalization … Yes, yes to rights.” Their mothers joined on Tuesday, wearing black and reciting a visitation prayer as they marched.

Similar protests have run for years in Iraq’s main oil governorate. Oil engineering graduates demonstrated outside the Basra Oil Company in 2023 over jobs allocated to Basra in the federal budget, and hundreds protested outside the South Gas Company in 2024 saying they had been taking their demands to fields and headquarters for close to a year. Riot police dispersed engineers and technical workers near the South Refineries Company in May and detained several before Basra Gov. Asaad al-Eidani ordered their release, and more than 300 protested outside the Basra Oil Company in April.