[4/9/04]The United States’ accomplishments in restoring Iraq’s oil-producing capacity were often difficult to communicate, said a Vicksburg Corps of Engineers public-affairs officer who spent months handling that task in Iraq.

Wayne Stroupe, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center here, was guest speaker for the local chapter of the Public Relations Association of Mississippi.

“It was trying to sell a car to somebody without showing them what it looked like,” Stroupe said of a main part of his assignment in Iraq.

Stroupe was probably the Corps’ first Task Force Iraqi Oil public affairs officer to be moved into the country. He was deployed from Aug. 24 to Nov. 19 and his job was to handle public affairs for TFRIO for the southern third of Iraq, a British-controlled sector.

He was the public-affairs officer in a group of 20 TFRIO officials responsible for the region. The others were managing the U.S. contract with Halliburton, which was doing most of the work in restoring the region’s oil-producing and distributing capacity, which included four major oil fields and, “I want to say 4 zillion miles of pipeline,” Stroupe said.

During Stroupe’s first month, oil exports passed the 1-million-barrel-a-day mark for the first time since U.S. forces invaded the country on March 19, 2003. Production climbed to near its a postwar peak of about 1.5 million barrels a day while Stroupe was there.

“We’re always touting, Well, so-and-so can tell you we’ve got 1 million barrels of oil coming out of Iraq,” Stroupe said.

Most general-news reporters, however, directed most of their questions toward other topics.

“Well, how many people got shot?” Stroupe said they would ask instead. “How many bombs were dropped today? Tell us about Halliburton, the contractor there.”

Stroupe said that, because of security concerns of the British military officers who controlled the area and Halliburton company policy, only “a couple of media actually got in, and actually talked to us.” Most of those reporters were for specialized publications for the oil-and-gas industry, he added.

Some accomplishments couldn’t be told, he said. If a pipeline or loading facility was described as working well, it would become a target for insurgents.

A Vicksburg native, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, served as the commander of TFRIO from January 2003 until November 2003. The operation’s mission was to extinguish all oil fires and then to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

Crear was named last month as the next commander of the Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division, which is based here.

Stroupe said he volunteered to go to Iraq. And he said that, despite the challenges he faced there, he would do so again. He said he saw the Iraqi people’s attitude and the danger from potential terrorism change during his almost three months in the country.

“When I first got there about 90 percent of them were happy” that U.S. forces were there, he said. “By the time I left, the Iraqis were getting a little more anxious.”