Gas Costs $400 a Gallon in Afghanistan

The logic about how the war in Iraq would pay for itself from oil revenues never did pan out in spite of the fact that it’s an oil-rich country. How much worse is the situation in Afghanistan, then, where there is no oil industry and the very cost of getting fuel to U.S. forces – buying, shipping and hauling – has become embarrassingly high?

About $400 per gallon worse.

That’s the figure the Pentagon has come up with after crunching all the costs related to getting gasoline into the tanks, Humvees and helos operating in the Afghan theater, according to the Pentagon.

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The number emerged after the Pentagon’s comptroller was directed to spell out why the Afghan war costs about $1 billion for every 1,000 Americans deployed there, according to a report in The Hill newspaper, which said the Obama administration uses that number in estimating costs of sending the up-to-40,000 new troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The reasons given for the overall high price for fuel – what the Pentagon calls the “fully burdened cost of fuel” – is the lack of infrastructure in Afghanistan and a geography that’s unforgiving of ground transport bound for remote bases in mountainous regions.

The country is landlocked by Iran to the west, Pakistan to the south and east, and “the ‘Stans’ – Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – to the north, so fuel has to be trucked in before it can be delivered anywhere within the country. Like all vehicle that travel the roads in Afghanistan, convoys are subject to enemy attack.

The Hill, citing a Government Accountability Office report, said that 44 trucks and about 220,000 gallons of fuel were lost because of attacks or other mishaps while en route to Bagram Air Field in June of 2008 alone.

Flying fuel in bladders aboard helicopters is faster and avoids ambushes, but it adds to the overall costs, officials said.

As a result, factoring in purchasing the fuel, getting into the country and out to the units where it’s needed, the military spends $400 for every gallon of gas.

The Pentagon began earnestly tracking the fully burdened cost of fuel more than two years ago under a pilot program ordered by then-Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Kenneth J. Krieg.

What began as a pilot program to estimate to total fuel costs of a few programs, among them the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, would then be expanded across all Defense Department acquisition and business processes, according to a April 10, 2007 memo.

The intent of the program was to reduce the fuel intensity of Pentagon operations while increasing the energy productivity and combat capability of the services.