Pipelines feeding it with crude are attacked, raw material supplies are stolen at gunpoint and its output is smuggled across the border as ordinary Iraqis buckle under a gruelling fuel shortage.
The Baiji refinery, about 225 kilometers (124 miles) north of Baghdad, is Iraq's largest, with a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day but now operating at almost half of that due to a slew of problems.
In addition to gasoline, Baiji produces kerosene for heating and liquefied petroleum gas (propane) for cooking.
On Monday a fire raged about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of the refinery after the pipeline supplying it with crude from the oil fields of Kirkuk was sabotaged, according to an official with the Northern Oil Co.
The night before a pumping station nearby was attacked with mortars.
"Every time that happens the valves have to be shut to repair the pipeline, so we get no crude and we have to stop working," said Abdul Kader Salih, the refinery's deputy manager.
"Once the repairs are done it takes us three days to fire up everything back again."
Salih said the refinery is out of commission for about the same period or longer whenever frequent power cuts force it to close or when it cannot fix a maintenance problem right away due to a lack of spare parts.
Raw materials needed for the refining process are also hard to come by or sometimes stolen on their way to Baiji, according to Salih.
Just two weeks ago he said a trailer carrying almost 100 tonnes of raw materials from Basra in the south was ambushed at gunpoint by bandits, who made off with both the shipment, worth about 500,000 dollars, and the trailer.
And even if they are lucky to get the spare parts and supplies, there might not be enough technicians around to do the work.
Salih said the refinery employs about 5,400 at nine of its plants in and around Baiji but that many are either too afraid to come to work because of attacks or cannot find transport due to the fuel shortages plaguing Iraqis for the past few months.
This is only part of the irony in a country that is supposed to sit on the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.
One of the drivers transporting gasoline from the refinery's distribution center to gas stations in Baiji itself says he has to wait sometimes days to get fuel for his own needs.
"When we ask officials at the distribution centre about the shortages, they tell us the refinery produces nothing and that all the fuel we are loading is from Turkey," said Raed al-Qaisi, 25, who moonlights at a nearby tire repair shop to make ends meet.
Iraq's interim oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum has signed contracts with neighboring Kuwait, Iran, Syria and Turkey for the swap of Iraqi crude with fuel products to meet its shortages during the winter months.
But Salih says a lot of the fuel that his refinery produces for the local market ends up making its way into Iran, Jordan, Syria and Turkey by smugglers who can sell it at much higher prices there.
Salih had no figures on the amounts smuggled but said it was "significant" adding that one liter of fuel can fetch up to a dollar in Turkey compared with the official price of one cent in Iraq.
Coalition officials were not available to comment on the plight of Baiji or Iraq's other main refineries in Basra and Dura, west of Baghdad, which are not faring any better and also working at slightly under half their capacity, according to the oil ministry.
However, officials had previously estimated that eight to 10 million dollars would be needed to bring Baiji up to standard.
But a statement by the office of the coalition's special advisor to the oil ministry, Robert McKee, blamed the shortage on "a massive increase in the number of vehicles on Iraq's roads, pipeline sabotage and looting ... of crude oil to refineries and refined product to distribution centres."
To deal with the problem the oil ministry imposed further restrictions on gasoline sales last week, limiting each motorist to 30 liters (around eight gallons), compared with a 50-liter limit announced on December 10.
The coalition says its forces along with Iraqi security forces have been "escorting tankers not only to distribution points but also on to the gas stations to ensure that the amount that should be delivered is delivered."
It also promised longer working hours at petrol stations in Baghdad and more pumps in the new year.
On the road from Baghdad to Baiji refinery's gates the queues at petrol stations stretch in some cases to about two kilometers (more than a mile).
Black marketeers could be spotted nearby with their jerrycans and plastic containers, offering fuel at almost 25 times the official one cent price in a country with an average monthly wage of 60 dollars.
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