‘Destruction disguised as progress’: oil operations depleting Iraq’s ancient Hawizeh wetlands

‘Destruction disguised as progress’: oil operations depleting Iraq’s ancient Hawizeh wetlands

At first light, mist hangs over Hawizeh’s canals, where water and sky reflect each other. In the back of a slim wooden skiff, 23-year-old Mustafa Hashim surveys the shallows, kills the engine, and uses a pole to avoid tangling in invasive roots or sinking into thickening mud.

It now takes roughly 30 minutes to traverse the contracting marshes to Um al-Nea’aj, a lake that once teemed with boats and birds. The water there is about half a meter deep. “Two years ago there were families and fishermen everywhere,” Mustafa says, recalling laughter and the sound of fish breaking the surface. “Today, there’s nothing.” On the skyline, flares from the Halfaya oil field burn.

Southern Iraq’s wetlands, known collectively as the Mesopotamian Marshes, rank among the most imperiled ecosystems on the planet. Tradition holds they may have encompassed the biblical Garden of Eden. The area became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016 and, since 2007, has been listed under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international significance. Historically, the marshes extended nearly 200 km from Nasiriyah to Basra, forming a vast aquatic habitat. Subsurface, however, lies oil. Three major concessions overlap the protected zone: Halfaya, Huwaiza, and Majnoon. Majnoon—named from the Arabic for “crazy”—is classed as a “supergiant” field, with reserves estimated at up to 38 billion barrels (5.2 billion tons). Extraction techniques used there and across the region consume large volumes of water. In a landscape already facing drought and advancing desertification, the marshes are being drained.

Mustafa’s grandfather, 87-year-old Kasid Wanis, once traveled by boat from Hawizeh to Basra—around 70 miles—relying only on a pole and memory of the channels. “We didn’t know what cars were. We didn’t need them. We were water people,” he says. Mustafa’s father, 41-year-old Hashim, was raised fishing these waters but packed up his nets four years ago. “There isn’t enough water to live on,” he says. Oil underpins Iraq’s economy, providing more than 95% of exports and 69% of GDP. Iraq is the world’s sixth-largest crude producer, and developments in the Hawizeh marshes are closely bound to the petroleum sector. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, European buyers sought to replace Russian crude, with Iraq emerging as a significant supplier.

The link between oil production and water depletion here is direct. Halfaya, which includes an equity stake held by TotalEnergies, is operated by a PetroChina-led consortium. The field spans an area roughly three times the size of Paris and comprises 300 wells, three oil processing plants, a water treatment facility, and a dedicated airstrip moving foreign personnel between the site and international airports. It is the largest overseas venture of state-owned PetroChina. Not long after PetroChina began operating, six pumping stations were constructed along the Tigris River, the main artery feeding the marshes.

Those stations collectively draw about 60,000 cubic meters of water daily—comparable to the usage of a medium-sized city. The water is diverted to the fields and injected into wells to maintain reservoir pressure and boost crude output, a standard method in the region. The withdrawals come atop already diminished flows. Dams upstream in Turkey and within Iraq’s Kurdish region have cut water reaching southern Iraq by more than 50% since the 1970s; Iranian dams on the Karkheh River, a source for the Hawizeh marshes, have further reduced supplies. Residents say sustaining this oil complex is costing them both their environment and their livelihoods. Hashim now worries less about declining fish than about the spread of security posts. Channels that formerly penetrated deep into the reeds are barricaded and watched. Armed personnel manage entry, demanding identification from local fishers and buffalo herders.

The area has effectively been militarized. Officials say expanded police and military deployments aim to curb smuggling and protect the frontier with Iran, which lies only a few kilometers away. Locals contend the same measures quell demonstrations. “The occupation is after oil,” Mustafa says. “They want to cut us off from our land so they can exploit it without resistance.” As water vanished, Mustafa, like many, took work in the very industry he blames. In 2023 he and his father were contracted to PetroChina. “I saw it up close,” he says. “They call it development, but it’s destruction disguised as progress.”

By summer he had quit. That year brought peak drought and a wave of protests across the region, and Mustafa helped organize blockades on access roads to the fields. “At first, I told Mustafa to stop,” Hashim says. “But then he made me see: this is political, and we can’t stay silent.” Beyond water demand, oil activity has been tied to serious pollution. “This economy is literally killing people,” says Majid al‑Saadi, head of the agriculture department in Maysan province. In late 2024, Saadi’s office compiled a confidential local government assessment of oil’s impacts. Obtained by the Guardian, the report cites alarming levels of hydrocarbons and heavy metals, contaminants in drinking water, and a collapse in regional farming. “This isn’t just pollution, it’s expropriation,” Saadi says.

In early 2025, Saadi forwarded the report to Iraq’s Ministry of Environment and says officials pledged to open discussions with the Ministry of Oil, though he doubts follow-through. Meanwhile, expansion continues. Leaked photos and videos, which the Guardian geolocated, show excavators, pipelines, and crews cutting into the core of the protected zone at the site of the new Huwaiza field. An independent analysis for the Guardian by Placemarks, a geoanalytics firm that maps environmental change with satellite data, corroborated ongoing exploration.

A February 2023 contract between the state-owned Maysan Oil Company and China’s Geo‑Jade Petroleum enabled development of Huwaiza. Fresh drilling would directly contravene Ramsar protections. The convention, however, is not legally binding and depends on states’ voluntary adherence. Iraq’s petroleum and environment ministries did not answer requests for comment. In July, the Interior Ministry’s federal security affairs agency posted that environmental police had carried out a site inspection to track possible violations from oil activities in the Hor al‑Huwaiza area. The statement said the surveyed pond had fully dried and that no drilling, extraction, or oil waste disposal was occurring there; it added that excavation was underway by local firms contracted by Geo‑Jade for exploration and the future placement of oil platforms.

Environment Ministry official Jassem Falahi previously told AFP that protected status does not automatically halt projects. He said in May that any investment must respect specific conditions and standards that avoid disturbing the core zone or harming the site and its biodiversity. A TotalEnergies spokesperson noted the company’s 22.8% holding in Halfaya but said it is not the operator and referred inquiries to PetroChina. PetroChina and Geo‑Jade did not reply to requests for comment.

UNESCO, contacted by the Guardian, emphasized its “grave concern about the continued vulnerability of the property’s natural components to oil and gas development.” As livelihoods disappear, residents in Hawizeh face limited choices. In Mustafa’s village, hundreds of houses stand empty. Three months ago, fresh protests broke out in the marshes. Hundreds gathered near Halfaya to oppose new drilling permits. “This is not just about current drilling rights,” Mustafa said. “We are fighting so that the next generation can know the wetlands that our ancestors protected for thousands of years.”

The unrest coincides with rising Iraqi oil output amid an intensifying water crisis. With another extreme summer underway, the head of the Basra Human Rights Commission called for a state of emergency, warning of an impending humanitarian disaster driven by shortages, contamination, and increasing toxicity. What endures in the marshes is a quiet struggle over territory, water, and collective memory. “The government and corporations have turned us into a cake to be shared,” Mustafa says. “They treat these waters as a business opportunity. For us, it’s life.” The investigation received support from Journalismfund Europe and IJ4EU.