Oil Blast
by Alexander Fusi
“We explore an abandoned farm laid out among the wells. Grasses and trees glisten black, oily to the touch. A faltering specter parts the twilight—a horse. Once it was a fine white Arabian mare. Now it is a gaunt ghost, pitiably stained and matted with oil. It nuzzles our headlamps oddly, as if craving light, then reaches for our offering of apples and water. We know it soon will die in this befouled land.” (Thomas Y. Canby)
February 1991.
In this menacing, obscure, and surrealistic landscape, the fouled desert air is chill as smoke clouds block the ever-bright sun. Over 500 blazing oil wells hurl poison aloft into the black sky and contaminate the marine environment as the retreating Iraqi forces wave off the light of destruction.
“A hellish landscape yields scant forage for camels wandering beneath the black plumes of burning oil wells in Kuwait. Retreating Iraqis had ignited the wells, poisoning lands and air. There were fires shooting out of the ground for as far as I could see,” states photographer Steve McCurry in his interview with National Geographic. “It was like the end of the world.”
As these words fill our green heart with melancholy and misery, the world takes a hit. It is a wound that has never healed and probably never will as we continue on the path of destruction with our consumerist-desires and our environmental-unfriendly habits. Why has this happened? How has this occurred?
The answer is greed.
As the eve of the Iraqi invasion came closer, Kuwait had set production quotas to almost 1.9 million barrels per day (300,000 m3 /d), which coincided with a great drop in the price of oil. By the summer of 1990, Kuwaiti overproduction had become a serious point of contention with Iraq.
The Iraqi regime, at this point, decided to set on fire the country's oil reserves and infrastructure as soon as possible before withdrawing from Kuwait. As early as December 1990, explosives were set on Kuwaiti oil wells by Iraqi forces. The wells were systematically sabotaged beginning January 1991, when the allies commenced air strikes against Iraqi targets.
Copious volumes of hydrocarbons were blown in into the marine environment in many ways. Alongside shipping losses and the eradication of oil processing facilities, it is estimated that around 10.8 million barrels of oil (MEPA, 1993) were released into Gulf waters from January to June 1991, oiling the shorelines from Kuwait to as far south as Abu Ali in Saudi Arabia.
Viewed through the eyes of the globe, this oil spill into the northern Arabian Gulf far exceeded any previous disastrous spill. Extremely devastating and long-lasting effects were expected from this spill, raising considerable international concern.
Some of the first images the world saw were of oiled seabirds struggling for life. Seabirds were among the most heavily impacted organisms because Saudi Arabia is on the West Asian Flyway, an important flyway for birds migrating between western Asia and eastern Africa. Other impacts included tidal flats (180 km “oiled”, sharp reduction of fauna populations), salt marshes, mangroves, coral reefs and fisheries, which involved the destruction and eradication of the local fauna, thus destabilizing the ecosystem. This travesty, and the monstrous billowing clouds of smoke riveted the world’s attention. As blue skies bid farewell to Kuwait, according to Nat Geo, 500 metric tons of aerial pollutants, ranging from the classic worldly pollutant that is CO2 to the key component of acid rain, sulfur dioxide, were released in the atmosphere.
These compounds had a great impact on the aerial environment and contribute greatly to many problems such as increasing the effect of Global warming, acid rain, soil acidification and erosion, and to some extent, eutrophication. (Personal communicator Professor Beal 2014).
Sooty palls rode the tempestuous winds and spread their malevolent claws over the hills were the sun sets its eyes, beyond the lands of Kuwait. Black snow hit the neighboring countries. Diseases spread throughout different populations; increased respiratory ailments increased among humans; carcinogens were released in the atmosphere. Chaos reverberates in the air.
Death.
This is mankind.
[Photo, Kuwait Oil Fires 1991, Samira, licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
by Alexander Fusi
“We explore an abandoned farm laid out among the wells. Grasses and trees glisten black, oily to the touch. A faltering specter parts the twilight—a horse. Once it was a fine white Arabian mare. Now it is a gaunt ghost, pitiably stained and matted with oil. It nuzzles our headlamps oddly, as if craving light, then reaches for our offering of apples and water. We know it soon will die in this befouled land.” (Thomas Y. Canby)
February 1991.
In this menacing, obscure, and surrealistic landscape, the fouled desert air is chill as smoke clouds block the ever-bright sun. Over 500 blazing oil wells hurl poison aloft into the black sky and contaminate the marine environment as the retreating Iraqi forces wave off the light of destruction.
“A hellish landscape yields scant forage for camels wandering beneath the black plumes of burning oil wells in Kuwait. Retreating Iraqis had ignited the wells, poisoning lands and air. There were fires shooting out of the ground for as far as I could see,” states photographer Steve McCurry in his interview with National Geographic. “It was like the end of the world.”
As these words fill our green heart with melancholy and misery, the world takes a hit. It is a wound that has never healed and probably never will as we continue on the path of destruction with our consumerist-desires and our environmental-unfriendly habits. Why has this happened? How has this occurred?
The answer is greed.
As the eve of the Iraqi invasion came closer, Kuwait had set production quotas to almost 1.9 million barrels per day (300,000 m3 /d), which coincided with a great drop in the price of oil. By the summer of 1990, Kuwaiti overproduction had become a serious point of contention with Iraq.
The Iraqi regime, at this point, decided to set on fire the country's oil reserves and infrastructure as soon as possible before withdrawing from Kuwait. As early as December 1990, explosives were set on Kuwaiti oil wells by Iraqi forces. The wells were systematically sabotaged beginning January 1991, when the allies commenced air strikes against Iraqi targets.
Copious volumes of hydrocarbons were blown in into the marine environment in many ways. Alongside shipping losses and the eradication of oil processing facilities, it is estimated that around 10.8 million barrels of oil (MEPA, 1993) were released into Gulf waters from January to June 1991, oiling the shorelines from Kuwait to as far south as Abu Ali in Saudi Arabia.
Viewed through the eyes of the globe, this oil spill into the northern Arabian Gulf far exceeded any previous disastrous spill. Extremely devastating and long-lasting effects were expected from this spill, raising considerable international concern.
Some of the first images the world saw were of oiled seabirds struggling for life. Seabirds were among the most heavily impacted organisms because Saudi Arabia is on the West Asian Flyway, an important flyway for birds migrating between western Asia and eastern Africa. Other impacts included tidal flats (180 km “oiled”, sharp reduction of fauna populations), salt marshes, mangroves, coral reefs and fisheries, which involved the destruction and eradication of the local fauna, thus destabilizing the ecosystem. This travesty, and the monstrous billowing clouds of smoke riveted the world’s attention. As blue skies bid farewell to Kuwait, according to Nat Geo, 500 metric tons of aerial pollutants, ranging from the classic worldly pollutant that is CO2 to the key component of acid rain, sulfur dioxide, were released in the atmosphere.
These compounds had a great impact on the aerial environment and contribute greatly to many problems such as increasing the effect of Global warming, acid rain, soil acidification and erosion, and to some extent, eutrophication. (Personal communicator Professor Beal 2014).
Sooty palls rode the tempestuous winds and spread their malevolent claws over the hills were the sun sets its eyes, beyond the lands of Kuwait. Black snow hit the neighboring countries. Diseases spread throughout different populations; increased respiratory ailments increased among humans; carcinogens were released in the atmosphere. Chaos reverberates in the air.
Death.
This is mankind.
[Photo, Kuwait Oil Fires 1991, Samira, licensed by CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]