From June 2005 through June 2006, Major Mark Parsons served as chief of the POL and Water Branch for the Combined Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) C4, based in Kuwait, as part of a fusion cell with the 475th Petroleum Group in support of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. In this interview, he provides a general overview of fuel and water operations; his chain of command; problems and considerations involved with providing fuel to forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan; the technical aspects of the whole process, including issues of contractor trucking; as well as the fate of the fuel pipeline used during the early stages of OIF from Kuwait into Iraq. Parsons talks specifically about what it took and the challenges that arose in obtaining fuel (approximately two million gallons a day) through three principal sources - Kuwait, Turkey and Jordan - and talks about such things as border issues and the pros and cons of sending fuel by ground versus by air. In addition, he discusses working with such agencies as the Defense Energy Supply Center and all the different types of fuel he was responsible for obtaining. "Trying to find the even point on how much fuel we needed was hard," he said. "It's like steering a ship. You always have to make corrections to get it right." Parsons points to the "continued buildup of storage" as among his office's biggest successes. In closing, he talks about the need that Iraq has to develop its own internal crude oil refining capacity. "The nation has lost billions and billions of dollars per year since the beginning of the war," he said. "By improving the infrastructure, they could make money that could be distributed out to different parts of the country and used to start rebuilding schools, hospitals, roads and industries."

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