The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces burning 605 to 732 oil wells reported along with a number of empty areas filled with unspecified oil, such as oil lakes and fire ditches, as part of a scorched earth policy on retreat from Kuwait in 1991 due to the progress of the Coalition's military forces in the Persian Gulf War. Fires started in January and February 1991, and the first fire was extinguished in early April 1991, with the last well closed on 6 November 1991.
Video Kuwaiti oil fires
Motives
A dispute between Iraq and Kuwait over alleged drilling at the Rumaila oil field was one of the reasons for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
In addition, Kuwait has been producing oil above the limit of agreements set by OPEC. Ahead of the Iraq invasion, Kuwait set a production quota of nearly 1.9 million barrels per day (300,000 m 3 /d), which coincided with a sharp fall in oil prices. In the summer of 1990, Kuwait's overproduction has become a serious point of contention with Iraq.
Some analysts have speculated that one of Saddam Hussein's main motives in attacking Kuwait was to punish the ruling Al-Sabah family in Kuwait for not stopping the overproduction policy, and the reason behind the destruction of the wells.
It is also hypothesized that Iraq decides to destroy the oil fields for military gain, believing that large smoke clusters that function as smoke screens created by burning oil wells will obstruct the Coalition's offensive air attacks, thwart weapons that jointly guided and spy satellites, and can filter Iraqi military movements. Furthermore, it is estimated that Iraqi military leaders may have regarded the heat, smoke, and debris of hundreds of burning oil wells as representing a great regional resistance obstacle to the Coalition forces. The beginning of the destruction of oil wells supports this military dimension to the sabotage of wells; for example, during the initial stages of the Coalition air campaign, the number of oil wells burned was relatively small but the number increased dramatically in late February with the advent of ground warfare.
Iraqi military combat engineers also deployed oil to low-lying areas for defense purposes against infantry and mechanical units along Kuwait's southern border, building several "fire trenches" 1 kilometer long, 3 meters wide and 3 meters wide for blocking the progress of the Coalition's ground forces.
The military use of ground-based fires should also be seen in the context of the deliberate, and deliberate, Gulf Bay oil spill, a clear strategic objective is to thwart potential amphibious landing by US Marines.
Maps Kuwaiti oil fires
Extent
As an international coalition under US command formed to anticipate the invasion of occupied Kuwait, the Iraqi regime decided to destroy as much of Kuwait's oil reserves and infrastructure before withdrawing from the country. In early December 1990, Iraqi forces placed explosives at Kuwait's oil wells. The well was systematically sabotaged from January 16, 1991, when the allies started an air raid on Iraqi targets. On February 8, satellite images detected the first smoke from burning oil wells. The number of oil fires peaked between February 22 and 24, when the allied ground offensive began.
According to a US Environmental Protection Agency report to Congress, "The retreating Iraqi army burned or damaged more than 700 oil wells, storage tanks, refineries and facilities in Kuwait." Estimates put the number of oil well fires from 605 to 732. More than thirty-four wells have been destroyed by heavy coalition bombing in January. The estimate of Kuwait Petroleum Company as of September 1991 was that there were 610 fires, out of a total of 749 damaged or burned facilities along with unfilled oil in low-lying areas, such as "oil lakes" and "fire" ditches. 50% of the total number of oil wells in the history of the petroleum industry, and temporarily destroying or destroying about 85% of the wells in each of Kuwait's oil fields.
The efforts undertaken to bring fire and other damage under control began in April 1991. During the uncontrolled burning phase from February to April, sources estimate that wellheaded heads burned between four and six million barrels of crude oil, and between seventy-one hundred million cubic meters of natural gas per day. Seven months later, 441 facilities had been controlled, while 308 remained uncontrollable. The last well closed on 6 November 1991. The total amount of oil burned is generally estimated to be about one billion barrels from the entire one hundred and four billion supply. Almost one out of every 100 barrels is destroyed forever. Global oil consumption every day by 2015 is about 91.4 million barrels; oil lost by burning will last 11 days with modern usage levels.
Military effects
On March 21, 1991, Saudi Royal Air Force C-130H crashed in thick smoke from a Kuwaiti oil fire as it approached Ras Mishab Airport, Saudi Arabia. 92 Senegalese soldiers and 6 Saudi crew members were killed, the biggest accident among Coalition forces.
Smoke filtering is also used by Iraqi anti-armor forces to a successful level in the Battle Line Line Bullet, which has helped in achieving a surprise element against advancing Bradley (IFV), along with increasing general fog of war.
Fires burned out of control because of the danger of sending firefighters during the war. Landmines have been placed in areas around oil wells and military mines are needed before fires can be extinguished. About 5 million barrels (790,000 m 3 ) oil is lost every day. Finally, the contracted crew personally extinguished the fire, for a total cost of US $ 1.5 billion to Kuwait. At that time, however, the fire had been burning for about ten months, causing widespread pollution.
Fire has been linked to what was then considered Gulf War Syndrome, a chronic disorder that afflicts military veterans and civilian workers that include fatigue, muscle aches, and cognitive problems; However, research shows that firefighters who cover the well do not report any symptoms experienced by the soldiers. The cause of the Gulf War Syndrome has not been determined.
From the perspective of ground forces, regardless of the occasional "oil rains" experienced by troops very close to spewing the well, one of the most common effects of oilfield fires is the next smoke clump that rises into the atmosphere and then deposited or falls from the air through dry deposition and by rain. The pillar-like pillars often widen and join with other smoke clumps at higher altitudes, resulting in a cloudy gray cloudy effect, since only about 10% of all fires associated with those originating from "oil lakes" produce black soot filled completely , 25% of fires emit white fur to gray, while the rest radiate feathers with colors between gray and black. For example, a Gulf War veteran states:
It was like a cloudy day all day, in fact, we did not realize it was smoke at first. The smoke was about 500 meters above us, so we could not see the sky. However, we can look horizontally for long distances without any problems. We knew it was smoke when the mucus from our nostrils started to look black... "
A paper published in 2000 analyzed the level of exposure by troops against particulate matter, which included soot but the paper focused more on silica sand, which could produce silicosis. The paper includes troop medical records, and in conclusion: "A literature review indicates no health risks missing from inhaled particulate matter (other than silica) during the Gulf War".
The blackout attempt
The burning well needs to be extinguished because, without active efforts, Kuwait will lose billions of dollars in oil revenues. It is estimated that fires will burn from two to five years before losing pressure and leaving themselves, optimists forecast two years and pessimists estimate five while the majority is estimated to be three years until this happens.
The companies responsible for putting out fires at first were Bechtel, Red Adair Company (now sold to Global Industries of Louisiana), Boots and Coots, and Wild Well Control. The Safety Boss is the fourth company to arrive but ends by extinguishing and limiting most other companies: 180 out of 600. Other companies including Cudd Well/Pressure Control, Neal Adams Firefighters, and Kuwait Wild Well Killers are also contracted.
According to Larry H. Flak, an oil engineer for Boots and Coots International Well Control, 90% of all 1991 fires in Kuwait were extinguished with only seawater, sprayed from a strong hose at the bottom of the fire. The water supply to the arid desert area was supplied by re-functioning the oil pipeline prior to the combustion, pumping oil into the Persian Gulf, the pipe was slightly damaged and after repair the flow was reversed to pump the Persian Gulf water to burn the oil well. The extinction rate is about 1 every 7-10 days at the start of the effort but then with the experience gained and the removal of the minefield surrounding the burning well, the rate increases to 2 or more per day.
For stubborn oil-burning fires, the use of gas turbines to detonate large volumes of water at high speeds in fires proved popular with firefighters in Kuwait and brought to the region by Hungarians equipped with a MiG-21 engine mounted initially on T- 34 (later replaced with a T-55) tank, called the Big Wind. It extinguished 9 fires in 43 days.
In the fight against flames at the well spewing vertically directly, high explosives, such as dynamite are used to create an explosive wave that drives the burning fuel and local atmospheric oxygen away from the well. (This is the same principle to blow out the candle.) The flame is removed and the fuel can continue to spill without light. Generally, explosives are placed in 55 gallon drums, explosives surrounded by fireproof chemicals, and then drums are wrapped in insulating material with horizontal cranes used to carry drums as close to the combustion area as possible.
The firefighters named their work the "Desert Operation Hell" after Operation Desert Storm.
Fire documentary
The fire was the subject of the 1992 IMAX documentary, Fires of Kuwait , nominated for an Academy Award. The film includes footage of the Hungarian team using their turbine jet extinguishers.
Lessons of Darkness is a 1992 film by director Werner Herzog exploring the damaged oil fields in the post-Gulf War of Kuwait.
Betchel Corporation produced a short documentary entitled Kuwait: Bringing Back the Sun which summarizes and focuses on fire suppression efforts, dubbed Al-Awda project (Arabic for "The Return").
Environmental impact
Oil Smoke
Immediately after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, predictions were made of environmental disasters stemming from Iraq's threat to blow up Kuwait's oil wells. Speculations ranging from scenarios of nuclear winter types, heavy acid rain and even short-term global warming were soon presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva in November.
On January 10, 1991, a paper appeared in the Journal of Nature, stating Paul Crutzen's calculation that the regulation of light from a Kuwaiti oil well would result in a "nuclear winter", with a cloud of smoke covering half of the Northern Hemisphere after 100 days have passed and under the clouds, the temperature will decrease 5-10 Celsius. This was followed by articles printed on Wilmington morning star and Baltimore Sun newspaper in mid to late January 1991, with the personality of popular TV scientist at the time, Carl Sagan, who was also coauthor of some of the first winter nuclear papers. along with Richard P. Turco, John W. Birks, Alan Robock and Paul Crutzen together collectively stated that they were expecting a winter nuclear disaster such as effects with continental size impacts of "sub-freezing" temperatures as a result if Iraq was subjected to its threat. from lighting 300 to 500 pressurized oil wells and they were burned for several months.
Then when Operation Desert Storm had begun, Dr. S. Fred Singer and Carl Sagan discussed the possible environmental impacts of the Kuwait petroleum fire on ABC News's Nightline program. Sagan once again argues that some effects of smoke can be similar to the effects of nuclear winter, with smoke lofting into the stratosphere, the atmospheric region starting about 43,000 feet (13,000 m) above sea level in Kuwait, resulting in global effects and that it believes the net effect would be very similar to the Indonesian volcano explosion of Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 known as the Year Without Summer .
He reported a preliminary modeling estimate that predicted the impact extends to southern Asia, and possibly to the northern hemisphere as well. Singer, on the other hand, says that the calculations show that the smoke will go to a height of about 3,000 feet (910 m) and then bombarded after about three to five days and thus the smoke age will be limited. Both the altitude estimate made by Singer and Sagan was wrong, although with Singer's narrative closer to what happened, with the relative minimal remaining atmospheric effect confined to the Persian Gulf region, with smoke clumps, in general, lofting up to about 10,000 feet ( 3,000 m) and several times as high as 20,000 feet (6,100 m).
Along with television critics published by Singer, Richard D. Small criticized the early paper Nature in reply on March 7, 1991 arguing with the same line with Singer.
Sagan later acknowledged in his book The Demon-Haunted World that his prediction did not turn out to be true: it was pitch dark during the day and temperatures fell 4-6 Â ° C above the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reaches the height of the stratosphere and Asia is spared. "
At the peak of fire, smoke absorbs 75 to 80% of solar radiation. Particles rise up to a maximum of 20,000 feet (6,100 m), but are preyed by cloud condensation nuclei from the atmosphere relatively quickly.
Sagan and his colleagues hope that the "self-lofting" of soot smoke will occur when absorbing solar thermal radiation, with little or no rinsing, where black soot particles will be heated by the sun and lifted lofted higher. and higher into the air, thereby injecting soot into the stratosphere where it takes years for the sun blocking effect of this sooty aerosol to fall from the air, and with it, ground-level cooling and agricultural impacts in Asia and possibly the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
In retrospect, it is now known that the smoke from the Kuwaiti oil fire only affected weather patterns throughout the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas during the burning period of 1991, with lower atmospheric winds blowing smoke along the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, cities like Dhahran and Riyadh, and countries like Bahrain are having days with a sky full of smoke and carbon black fall/fall.
Thus the immediate consequence of burning sabotage is the dramatic reduction of regional air quality, causing respiratory problems for many Kuwaitis and people in neighboring countries.
According to a 1992 study by Peter Hobbs and Lawrence Radke, the daily emissions of sulfur dioxide (which can produce acid rain) from Kuwait's oilfire are 57% of electricity usage in the United States, carbon dioxide emissions are 2% of global emissions and soot emissions reach 3400 metric tons per day.
In a paper in the DTIC archive, published in 2000, states that "The smoke-based calculations of the Kuwaiti oil fires of May and June 1991 indicate that the combustion efficiency is about 96% in carbon dioxide production, whereas in regard to incomplete combustion.Faction, Particle Smoke accounts for 2% of burned fuel, which is 0.4% carbon black. "[With 2% left, being oil that does not experience initial burning].
smoke documentary
Peter V. Hobbs also narrated an amateur short documentary entitled Kuwait Oil Fires that followed the Washington University's "University of Washington/UW Cloud and Aerosol Research Group" as they flew through, around and over the smoke clouds and sampled, measurements, and videos of smoke clouds in their Convair Air C-131 (N327UW) laboratory.
Oil spill
Despite scenarios that predict long-term environmental impacts on global atmospheric levels because burning oil sources do not occur, the long-lasting effects of the oil spill on the ground surface damage the environment regionally.
Forty-six wells are estimated to have sprung up, and before the attempt to stop it begins, they release about 300,000-400,000 barrels of oil per day, with the last shot closed in the last days of October 1991.
Kuwait's Petroleum Minister estimates that between twenty-five and fifty million barrels of unburnt oil from damaged facilities are collected to create about 300 oil lakes, which pollute about 40 million tons of sand and soil. A mixture of desert sand, unmarked oil and soot produced by burning oil wells form a hard tarcrete layer, which covers almost five percent of the mainland of Kuwait.
The cleaning effort was led by Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and Arab Oil Co., which tested a number of technologies including the use of oil-decomposing bacteria in oil lakes.
Vegetation in most contaminated areas adjacent to oil lakes began to recover in 1995, but dry climates have also compacted some of the lakes. Over time, oil continues to sink into the sand, with potential consequences for small groundwater resources in Kuwait.
Kuwait's land-based oil spill over Lakeview Gusher, which spilled nine million pounds in 1910, as the largest oil spill in recorded history.
Six to eight million barrels of oil directly spilled over the Persian Gulf, known as the Gulf War oil spill.
Comparable Incidents
During the second US invasion of Iraq in 2003, about 40 oil wells were burned in the Persian Gulf in the Iraqi territory, as if to once again block the invasion.
The Kuwaiti Rich Killer , who succeeded in extinguishing 41 oil fires in Kuwait in 1991, used their experience to tackle fires in the Iraqi Rumaila oil field in 2003.
In popular culture
- The flames are featured in the 1992 Werner Herzog film Lessons of Darkness .
- There are also overpasses as well as some land pictures from oil fires in the 1992 nonverbal film Baraka , taken on the 70mm Todd-AO film.
- The 2004 film The Manchurian Candidate includes a scene set in Kuwait in February 1991, by burning a field of oil visible in the background.
- In the 2005 film Jarhead, oil fires burned continuously during the 1991 invasion of Iraq, and their impact - the incessant rains of unburnt oil and smoke-filled skies, stand out in the story.
- In the 1999 film Three Kings , oil fires were featured in many scenes.
- In the 1990s TV series The X-Files , "Black Oil" is believed to be the causative agent of alien disease, evoking conspiracy theories that Gulf War syndrome is caused by Kuwait oil. Episode 2001, "Vienen", including the oil-rig fire that has the potential to spread The Black Oil contagion.
- In the 2002 video game Eternal Darkness the fire was displayed at the end of the game as the main plot point.
See also
- The environmental impact of the war
- Gulf Horn oil spill
- Devil's Cigarette Lighter - a good gas fire that consumes 16 million cubic meters of gas per day.
References
Further reading
- Against the Fire of Hell: The Gulf War Environmental Calamity . Hawley, T. M., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1992.
External links
- Fight Oil Well Fire
- Photos of oil flames taken by Kuwait journalist in 1991
- "The Kuwaiti Oil Fires (Environmental Disasters)" Published by Facts on File, Inc., April 2005, ISBNÃ, 0816057583, Author Kristine Hirschmann
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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