Talk:Kuwaiti oil fires

Nightline Debate

"During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Dr. S. Fred Singer debated Carl Sagan on the impact of the Kuwaiti petroleum fires on the ABC News program Nightline. Sagan said the smoke would loft into the upper atmosphere, disrupt the monsoons and lead to ecological disaster. Singer said such a view was ridiculous, that the smoke would go up only a few thousand feet and then be washed out of the atmosphere by rain. Three days later, black rain began falling over Iran, which essentially put an end to the speculation." this seems not important enough to be in the introductory paragraph. The speculation of two scientists about what they thought would happen and then did does not seem very notable. In addition, I do not know what it means because of the way it was worded. It just says what to viewpoints are, then says what happened as a result, then said it ended speculation. However how did that result end the speculation, and whose theory is correct. it is to amniguous for me to be able to decipher it at all. It almots seems as if someone included this just to make a point about one of the scientists.Scotto263 01:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have a source for whats on this page? Apart from formatting, its unchanged since "conversion script" wrote it. Seaching google, I find nothing but multiple copies of this rather dodgy article requoted in copies of wiki...

(William M. Connolley 16:36, 2004 Mar 18 (UTC)) I found something, not quite the same:

> "Quickly capping 363 oil well fires in a war zone is impossible. The
> fires would burn out of control until they put themselves out... The
> resulting soot might well stretch over all of South Asia... It could be
> carried around the world... [and] the consequences could be dire.
> Beneath such a pall sunlight would be dimmed, temperatures lowered and
> droughts more frequent. Spring and summer frosts may be expected... This
> endangerment of the food supplies... appears to be likely enough that it
> should affect the war plans..."
> 
> - Sagan and Richard Turco, The Baltimore Sun, January 31, 1991,
> commenting during the Gulf War on the impact of oil well fires

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kuwait+oil+fires+prediction+sagan&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3A848FFD.5510039D%40mad.scientist.com&rnum=6

Also:

>"In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, some 800 oil wells in Kuwait were
>set on fire by Iraqi troops. Prior to the war a number of predictions
>were made concerning the possible environmental impact of such an event.
>Early predictions warned of a "petroleum winter" effect: a significant
>enhancement of the greenhouse effect due to the large amount of carbon
>dioxide released in the combustion of the oil and global temperature and
>precipitation depressions associated with a thick cloud of smoke being
>lofted into the stratosphere. A number modeling studies discounted the
>"petroleum winter" hypothesis, arguing that insignificant amounts of
>smoke were likely to reach the stratosphere, and concluding that the
>effects from the smoke plume generated were likely to be important on
>only a regional scale. The predictions made in these modeling studies
>are generally confirmed by later satellite and aircraft observations of
>the smoke plume."

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=kuwait+oil+fires+prediction+sagan&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=EyFA1w.BIJ%40ranger.daytonoh.ncr.com&rnum=9

Accumulated loss

The Peak Oil article mentions that approximately 1.5 Gb burned away before all fires were extinguished. That number is absent from this article (only an estimated daily loss is given). Perhaps this number (and an estimated economic loss) should be included in this article as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.191.62.33 (talk) 20:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Contradictory data

In the introduction, it is mentioned that around 5 million barrels of oil were burnt a day. In the environmental impact section, its mentioned that 6 million barrels of oil were burnt a day. Which is more accurate? (Namzie11 (talk) 04:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC))

Of the sources in the article, this is the only one that seems to give a specific estimate (of 6 million barrels per day). So, I have changed the figure in the introduction. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hail and cold weather caused by smoke

I remember back in the early 90s (1991 or 1992, I can't remember), it hailed in the small city of Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia where I lived. It had never happened before and everybody was shocked. People even went out, collected the hail and put it inside their freezers! There were car accidents and at least a few electric poles fell over. The hail was of fairly small size so hail-related damage was limited. The electric poles were probably not designed for cold weather. In retrospect, the temperature was not sub-freezing but it was definitely below 7*C. This is shocking in itself in a place where it rarely rains and temperatures often soar to 50*C.

I believe this unprecedented and peculiar weather was caused by the fires in Kuwait. I don't have any sources, so that's why I'm simply writing my own personal first-hand experience here. --Zybez (talk) 19:18, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Motives

It appears that newly released documents may necessitate updating this section:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/world/middleeast/20archive.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Someone more proficient can dig deeper, but from this article:

"Mr. Gorbachev’s diplomatic efforts were undermined on Feb. 22 when the Kuwaiti oil well fires that Mr. Hussein had ordered set — and which he saw as a defensive measure — were described by Mr. Bush in his conversation with the Soviet leader as a “scorched-earth policy” and a reason to not delay military action." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.45.144.150 (talk) 01:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Still burning?

The article contradicts itself.

It states

" The fires started in January and February 1991 and the last one was extinguished by November 1991.[1]

But also :

"Two wells have yet to be sucessfully extinguished."

One would presume that after 20 years, the fires are out, but I cannot find any data either way... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.120.222.100 (talk) 14:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Still not sourced almost a year later. Removed. -- DevSolar (talk) 14:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Overview of the economics and changes in technology for extinguishing oil well fires, etc.

Before the war, Iraq threatened to start the oil wells on fire, and it was claimed that it would take many years to put out the fires. That did not come true. It would be good to survey how the technology of putting out these fires changed if at all during operations. Did the best practices change? Did the average amount of time for completing a job change? Did the number of crews in operation change? What was the typical cost for capping a well after---compared to the cost before---the fires were started? Did Iraq have to pay reparations for the lost oil and the environmental damage? Was there a timely and efficient response to the problem? What were some of the details of the economic incentives for the companies doing the work? Were the existing companies given incentive to train new teams both inside and outside their companies?CountMacula (talk) 13:39, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of the Kuwaiti Oil Lakes and Gulf War Oil Spill; Comparison to Lakeview Gusher

The reason that I included the material on the Kuwaiti Oil Lakes (which, as you can see, have no article of their own, being discussed only here and in oil spill) and the Gulf War oil spill (which I note appears to have disappeared in the most recent edits) was for context, and because this article is closely connected (for obvious reasons) with the article Oil Spill. That article defines "oil spill" as the release of oil into the environment, without restricting it to oil pooled on the ground or oil slicks in water, thus justifying the inclusion of the Kuwaiti Oil Fires; for several years the Kuwaiti Oil Fires have headed the list of largest oil spills in history, followed immediately by the lakes generated wholly or in part by the same wells that were damaged or set on fire, and shortly afterward by the Gulf War Oil Spill. I don't think the inclusion of all three under the heading of "oil spills" should be controversial; removing them and counting only oil spills that didn't result from the 1991 Persian Gulf War would be far more misleading, particularly in light of their magnitude.

Because all three spills were part and parcel of the same act of sabotage, and also because they constituted three of the four largest oil spills in history (interrupted only by the Lakeview Gusher), it seemed logical to mention both the Kuwaiti Oil Lakes and the Gulf War Oil Spill, and the amount of oil involved, together with the estimate of oil destroyed in the Kuwaiti Oil Fires. I understand that the Kuwaiti Oil Lakes are mentioned again under the heading of "environmental impact" (although the Gulf War Oil Spill is not), but it seems to me that they ought to be mentioned together with the historical description of the oil fires, even if they're subsequently discussed in greater detail under the heading of "environmental impact."

And in the case of the Lakeview gusher, I thought it would be instructive to note the difference in magnitude between the Kuwaiti Oil Fires and the largest oil spill in history not resulting from deliberate sabotage at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. I think it dramatically illustrates the size of the disaster in a way that the article does not without such a comparison.P Aculeius (talk) 14:06, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

My rationale for separating up the various avenues by which oil was lost, by fire, by land gushers and by sea was to convey the events in a more easily digested manner. When I first came to this page the article would jump from one to the next leaving me feeling jumbled up about what was being discussed. Now that ambiguity is gone and each avenue of oil loss is compartmentalized in a logical manner.

I can see your point of view though, coming from the angle of wanting to show it as all a single oil spill, however this runs into problems as mentioned above not least of which because the article is titled "Kuwaiti oil fires" and not "Kuwaiti oil gushers" nor Gulf War oil spill - which were both oil spills. Personally I think you should edit that latter page to include the land based oil spills from the 46 oil gushers. Would that suffice? As the Kuwaiti oil fires weren't oil spills. Regarding them as an oil spill is misleading and unencyclopedic. It would be like classifying the gas burning Devil's Cigarette Lighter as a gas spill, when it wasn't, it was also a fire.

31.200.144.195 (talk) 16:14, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any spill called "Kuwaiti oil gushers". As far as I can tell from the various reports (DoD, EPA, UN, etc.), there's no clear separation between pooled oil from wells that were set ablaze and those that weren't. Unless I find something clear and reliable to the contrary, I'm going to assume that some of the oil from the wells set on fire may not have burned, but contributed to the oil lakes. None of the sources I've seen separate the specific sources of this oil.

I'm sure that the definition of "oil spill" can be debated. But the definition in use includes oil fires, and has for several years. The substance in question was liquid oil; it was released into the environment in an uncontrolled manner. That some or most of it was then destroyed by fire doesn't change those facts, any more than the recovery of pooled oil converts what would otherwise be described as an oil spill into something else. I'm reasonably sure that in other disasters where some oil was pooled on land or in the water, and some was burnt, the relevant statistics are based on an estimate of all the oil involved, not merely the oil that didn't burn. It's not at all comparable to the Devil's Cigarette Lighter, which as that article states explicitly, was a natural gas well; I also note that there is no article about the phenomenon of "gas spills."

I don't see how classifying oil fires as a type of spill is misleading; if they're clearly labeled fires and so described, nobody is going to confuse them with non-burning oil. What would be misleading would be to exclude the Kuwaiti oil fires from a list of oil spills merely because the oil was burned after being released into the environment. As the numbers clearly show, as an oil spill the catastrophe easily heads the list of the largest discharges in history; redefining it as "not an oil spill" effectively makes it sui generis, since there's never been another oil fire on the same scale of magnitude either, or even on that of a large oil spill. It would be like defining "oil spill" as "all the oil-spill like events in history except for the biggest one of all." P Aculeius (talk) 18:09, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll first deal with your baseless and easily refuted assumption. (1) you stated above - "I'm going to assume that some of the oil from the wells set on fire may not have burned, but contributed to the oil lakes."

This is an unreferenced assumption that can be refuted by comparing two sources in the article - The total number of unburning, but gushing, oil wells is regarded to have been 46, and before efforts to cap them began, they were releasing approximately 300,000-400,000 barrels of oil per day, with the last gusher being capped occurring in the latter days of October 1991. The Kuwaiti Oil Minister estimated that in terms of total oil spilled, between twenty-five and fifty million barrels of unburned oil.

All you have to do is keep those two bolded figures in mind, and look at the referenced graph here which charts the average oil released from the unburning (Kuwaiti) "Gushing wells" in red(note also that the reference also separately charts the oil burnt from the burning wells in blue, thereby satisfying your desire for a reliable reference that separates the two phenomenon as wholly distinct and therefore the burning oil wells are not at all under the remit of being classified as an "oil spill".)

Once you take a look at the red bars in the link above you'll see that the Kuwaiti Oil Minister's estimated number of barrels of oil spilled: 25 to 50 million barrels released between February-October 1991 exactly matches up with the estimated unburnt oil spilled per day from those 46 gushers. Therefore your assumption that the ~605 burning wells contributed a non-negligible amount to the unburning oil spills from the 46 gushers is, albeit plausible, pretty baseless and contrary to the authoritative sources.

So you regard any - "uncontrolled release of oil as an oil spill" - including cases where no actual oil is spilled at all, which includes case were all that oil is burnt? This is counter to what the word means - to spill oil.

You also state - "The substance in question was liquid oil; it was released into the environment in an uncontrolled manner. That some or most of it was then destroyed by fire doesn't change those facts"-

While the oil ejected from the ~605 burning well heads at Kuwait was actually released into the environment in a premeditated semi-controlled manner, it had a residence time measured in milliseconds and did not actually do any of the all important spilling. I wonder, would you similarly regard an oil burner that directly takes oil from a well and exposes it to the air for a millisecond before burning it also as an "oil spill"? Essentially, burning wells as akin to the mother of all patio heaters, and how about some C4 strapped onto a barrel of oil and detonated with an idealized 100% of the oil combusting, according to your own personal definition of an "oil spill" this would also bizarrely be defined as an oil spill/a spill of oil. Would it not?

As for - "It's not at all comparable to the Devil's Cigarette Lighter, which as that article states explicitly, was a natural gas well; I also note that there is no article about the phenomenon of gas spills." - It is indeed comparable, as both the kuwaiti oil fires and the Cigarette where cases of well heads burning, not hydrocarbon spills, only the 46 odd unburning Kuwaiti well gushers created the oil spill on land. Lastly, there is indeed such a thing as an " LPG spill", as it is a liquid it can and does spill and it would be analogous to an oil spill from a gushing oil well.

Just in case my response sounds confrontational, I am enjoying the discussion friend and await your reply.

31.200.154.246 (talk) 00:33, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand my point about the Kuwaiti oil lakes, perhaps because, as in the example above, you've combined two different statements and attributed them to a source that doesn't support the combined statement. The statistic of 46 gushing wells not on fire are from the DoD report, which as the section it appears in makes clear, is a very rough estimate. Although a much later part of the document does attribute the pooling of oil into lakes to non-ignited wells, it provides a different estimate from that of the Kuwaiti Oil Minister as cited in the UN report, both as to the number of lakes and the amount of oil; as does the NASA site, although the USGS link seems to be dead; the material probably still exists at a different address.

The other reports don't indicate that burning wells made no contribution to pooled oil on the ground, and really even the DoD report doesn't explicitly say so; it just estimates a figure for oil released from non-burning wells, which doesn't account for the high-end estimates of the amount of oil in the other reports. Also, while the graph corroborates both the number of wells on fire and not on fire, and the total flow of oil, it doesn't allocate a particular amount of oil to each source. So it really doesn't resolve the question of whether the lakes derived solely from wells that gushed uncontrolled, without having been set on fire.

But my main point was that the Kuwaiti oil fires, Kuwaiti oil lakes, and Gulf War Oil Spill are all part and parcel of the same act of sabotage, all involve the same basic principle, and should all be treated as the same basic kind of environmental disaster (i.e. oil spills); for which reason they should at least be introduced as a group and their significance or magnitude described, at least in the simplest terms, together; even if each has a separate section or article providing more detail.

The argument you make about the oil fires not being an oil spill because the oil wasn't spilled is circular reasoning. If "oil spill" is defined as an uncontrolled release of oil into the environment, then the oil fires certainly qualify as an oil spill. Your argument, however, assumes that an "oil spill" means a stream or pool of liquid lying on the ground or in the water. Naturally, if you define a thing so as to exclude a particular example, then that example is not that thing. But in this case the definition is something other than what you want it to be, and it includes the example.

I've already tried to explain why it makes sense that the definition of "oil spill" includes the Kuwaiti oil fires, and why I believe it would be far more misleading to exclude them from that definition, when there really isn't a comparable category (oil well fires specifically being a much less familiar phenomenon than oil spills in general, one from which there may not be any other famous or particularly significant examples), and where it makes little sense to treat the three disasters as though they were completely different and unrelated events; and perhaps most importantly, because excluding the Kuwaiti oil fires would give the impression that they were a relatively minor event compared with other famous oil spills, even though more than a hundred times as much oil was lost in the fires as in any oil spill prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

As for the Devil's Cigarette Lighter, once again, that analogy fails because the material involved was not oil, but natural gas (not even liquified petroleum gas); the fact that the material was and had always been gaseous rather than liquid (or even petroleum) makes it impossible for it to qualify as an oil spill merely because the Kuwaiti oil fires fit under that definition. The Kuwaiti oil fires constitute an oil spill because the material released into the environment was liquid oil; not natural gas, not liquified gas, but naturally occurring liquid petroleum, which remained liquid up to the instant that it was burned. That alone makes the Kuwaiti oil fires distinguishable from the Devil's Cigarette Lighter or any other gas fire. Would a liquified petroleum gas fire be close enough to an oil spill to qualify? Perhaps. There's not a bright line separating things that are definitely oil spills from those that are definitely not. But while the Kuwaiti oil fires consisted of burning oil, the Devil's Cigarette Lighter did not, and thus it cannot be considered an oil spill, even if the Kuwaiti oil fires are. P Aculeius (talk) 04:42, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

If you can supply some references that support your plausible assertion that the ~605 burning well heads contributed substantially, say more than 1%, to the filling of the oil lakes while the oil wells were burning, as you suggest in your first paragraph above* then we can move forward, otherwise I'm skeptical this debate will be resolved. Moreover I hope you're not going to try and attempt comparing the DoD estimate of oil spilled by the 46 gushers with a different organizations estimate on the total oil spilled without also including that organization's estimates for the quantity of oil released by the 46 gushers As different organizations can use widely different methodologies to arrive at their estimates.

Your paragraph* - " The statistic of 46 gushing wells not on fire are from the DoD report, which as the section it appears in makes clear, is a very rough estimate. Although a much later part of the document does attribute the pooling of oil into lakes to non-ignited wells, it provides a different estimate from that of the Kuwaiti Oil Minister as cited in the UN report, both as to the number of lakes and the amount of oil; as does the NASA site, although the USGS link seems to be dead; the material probably still exists at a different address."-

The 1904 Bibi-Eibat oil well fire which like the kuwaiti oil well fires, was not an oil spill while it was burning. Only the Gulf War oil spill was an oil spill.

I understand your approach to this article is from the angle of wanting to reference the kuwaiti oil fires as the largest oil spill in history, however they fires weren't oil spills as the oils residence time in the atmosphere was measured in milliseconds and the oil itself did not cause any environmental damage, only the combustion products of the oil caused poor air quality and environmental damage that was categorically of a different nature than the environmental damage from actual oil spills, and anyway, aren't the oil spills from the 46 land based gushers together with the sea based portion of the Gulf War oil spill not greater than the Lakeview Gusher? So you succeed anyway? Why are you so interested in falsely ascribing the oil fires as oil spills? If you're interested in packaging them all as acts of sabotage, which they were, then that is a war related discussion and should go in the Gulf War article. If you want to describe all the acts of oil sabotage as a single environmental insult then that's really stretching it as the environmental effects of the fires are so different from the oil spills.

Why not edit the Gulf War oil spill article to include the contribution from the 46 land based gushers? That seems like the logical thing, at least to me. All you'd have to do is copy the material from this article that deals with the effects of the gushers?

Lastly, during the second US invasion of Iraq in 2003, oil wells(30 to 50) were once again set on fire in the Persian gulf and these fires weren't described as oil spills, here * | here likewise this recent Oil well fire on Baku Hafiz Heydarov in May 2014 was not described as an oil spill.|here

So your bizarre definition of an oil spill to include oil well fires is seemingly not supported by anyone else and so, as per WP:USEBYOTHERS, the article largest oil spills should not include fires like those at Kuwait in 1991 & Iraq in 2003 as NO reliable agency actually classifies the act of burning of oil as one in the same as the act of spilling oil.

92.251.207.0 (talk) 21:50, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Clearly you're not going to accept any definition other than your own, and you're still missing every point I've made. The whole point of this debate was to suggest that the Kuwaiti Oil Lakes and the Gulf War Oil Spill should be mentioned together with the paragraph discussing the extent of oil destroyed by the fires. And this point has been consistently ignored throughout the entire debate, as you focus on whether or not the fires are classified as an oil spill. Now you're even trying to move that debate over to the oil spill article, without dealing with the issue at hand here. If you're not willing to work toward consensus, then please, just drop the issue. P Aculeius (talk) 04:53, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Why should info on oil spills be cataloged in an article about oil fires and in a section of that article quantifying the amount of oil burnt? I simply moved the info on the oil spills down the article to their rightful place. In an article on oil fires readers aren't expecting to be reading about oil spills that did not go on fire.

If you could find some reliable sources that state that the Iraqi's didn't intend to create unburning oil lakes, that is, the 46 gushers were due to poor arson efforts, then it might make sense to mention that under "The extent of the fires" section. A sentence like - "the number of oil well fires would have been larger by 46 if the Iraqi's had succeeded in igniting all the oil wells they had planned for."

Apart from something along those lines, I fail to see the logic in including paragraphs on spills in a section detailing the extent of fires.

31.200.164.150 (talk) 03:02, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

An IP user's recent edits, requesting feedback

I'm generally happy with the article as it stands now, I've tagged a few things needing references that I wasn't able to find and also tagged one statement needing clarification.

The paragraph tagged for clarification is this- "At the peak of the fires, the smoke absorbed 75 to 80% of the sun’s radiation. The particles rose to a maximum of 20,000 feet (6,100 m), but were scavenged from the atmosphere relatively quickly.

My rationale for the tagging is that, from my understanding, soot isn't "scavenged"/(chemically attacked by atmospheric molecules) very quickly and is but a minor pathway for the removal of soot from the air, regardless of if it's from Diesel trucks or the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires, from my atmospheric science modules in college I came to the understanding that soot and particulate matter in general is removed from the air most commonly by physically being rained out, as it acts like a cloud condensation nuclei, being removed by wet deposition and/or it falls out via dry deposition. Chemical Scavenging only removes a small percentage of it.

So although the reference is a good one, I'd like some clarification on why the author appears to suggest chemical scavenging lay behind the removal of the soot, and if chemical scavenging did lay behind the majority of the soot's removal, how did they determine this, were experiments conducted etc?

I'd be interested in finding out.

31.200.144.195 (talk) 15:52, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

References

10, 20, or 23 years later: what do we know?

The article seems to be rather short on the long-term results: the clean-up, revegetation (where vegetation was previously), etc. What happened to the steel? ... the oil-drenched sand? (covered over with more sand? collected in dump trucks? forgotten about?)

Surely science teams and survey teams have documented the situation after n years. It seems the article might be much improved with a section on this topic, explicating the research on the long term outcome. N2e (talk) 03:24, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

You are right, there should be at least a paragraph on the clean-up or lack thereof. There is a bit on the long term effects from the Gulf War oil spill as that was into the thriving habitat of the sea, but there is very little(the last time I checked) on the oil drenched "tarcrete" sand. You sould be bold & look it up in Environmental remediation journals, if the info is anywhere, it'd be there.

92.251.182.174 (talk) 21:31, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

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Environmental Impact Section

Why is there so much information about what people (namely Carl Sagan) thought would happen? I think a one or two line paragraph that said "some scientists, such as Carl Sagan, were concerned that the smoke would reach the stratosphere. This prediction turned out to be incorrect." and then just stick to what the actual effects were. Flipster14191 (talk) 17:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

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