Despite pleas from the U.S. and other international observers, for example, it has not yet signed contracts for how to contain a spill or conduct emergency repairs should its roughly 35-year-old pipelines burst underwater.

Scientists believe the 31-mile pipeline used most heavily to send oil to offshore loading docks has in places nearly entirely disintegrated, leaving only an outer ring of concrete tunneling oil in the right direction.

The pipeline, considered a top terrorist target in the region, is so fragile that Iraq has not dared conduct a pressure test to see how much it can handle. But it has continued to pump nearly all of its growing exports through the line.

More than a dozen multibillion-dollar contracts that Iraq signed with international oil companies also now appear to have been done in haste. Nearly all are in need of renegotiation, less than two years after they were signed, Iraqi officials and industry analysts said.