Keep pimping, errr I mean pumping.
KUWAIT CITY, Mar 24, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX)
-- Kuwaiti firefighters blasted two water cannons for just 15 minutes on Monday to put out the first fire quenched so far at a booby-trapped Iraqi oil well.
Kuwait's senior firefighter, Aisa Bouyabes, said he
believes his team and others can douse the six remaining fires in Iraq's Rumeila South oil field within two
weeks.
Upon inspecting damaged well heads at several blast
sites just across Kuwait's border with Iraq, the team discovered a telltale pair of black telephone wires
snaking away from each one.
"These are the same wires that were used in Kuwait to
blow up our wells - the same method exactly. I've seen it before. I inspected the wells in Kuwait immediately after the liberation," Bouyabes said by phone from northern Kuwait.
Although it is far too early to be certain, initial
evidence suggests that in the vast majority of cases, Iraqi troops might have disobeyed orders to blow them up their oil wells, or might even have prepared explosives that were too weak to do them serious damage.
Iraqi troops sabotaged more than 700 well heads in Kuwait's oil fields as they retreated from the emirate in the closing days of the 1991 Gulf War. The damage took more than two years and US$50 billion to repair.
U.S.-led forces have made a priority in the current war of trying to secure Iraq's oil fields to prevent Saddam Hussein from sabotaging them in a repeat of that catastrophic scorched-earth tactic. One vexing question is why so few of Iraq's 1,685 oil wells are burning, despite ample evidence that Iraqis took time to rig them up for detonation.
Bouyabes said he believed the Iraqis had placed an explosive charge several feet (two meters) underground at the blazing well he visited two kilometers (1.2 miles) across Kuwait's border with Iraq. The result was a mangled well head and flames 35 feet (11 meters) high.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons on Monday that Iraq's oil wealth was "mined and deep-mined at that.
Had we not struck quickly, Iraq's future wealth would even now be burning away."
However, the will needed to ignite a multitude of desert infernos has so far not measured up to Iraqis' apparently extensive effort to lay and wire up the charges.
"I don't think that the Iraqis ever really intended to
blow these wells up and keep them burning forever," said Rob Laughlin, managing director of London brokerage GNI Man Financial.
Bouyabes said he inspected at least two other wells in
Rumeila South that were damaged but not burning. They too had been rigged up with black wire, and the direction of the blasts and the placement of sand bags around each well head were persuasive clues of sabotage, he said.
Yet, for some reason, the explosions at those sites had not been powerful enough to destroy the well heads and spark fires.
"Whoever put in the explosives did not want to repeat what happened in Kuwait," Bouyabes suggested. "This is just an assumption: I don't think Saddam had very good control over these guys."
Rumeila South has about 500 well heads. Until the Kuwaiti firefighters got to work, only seven of the wells were burning.
Some analysts say this low number suggests that many Iraqi troops might have disagreed with the planned self-destruction and disobeyed orders from Baghdad to ignite the wells.
Iraq has the world's second-largest proven crude reserves, and it will need revenues from oil exports to help pay for its postwar reconstruction.
U.S. Brigadier Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of
operations at the American Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said the absence of widespread damage in the oil fields was "a very important story for the future of Iraq."
Coalition forces had mounted operations to secure Rumeila South and the oil terminals on Iraq's Persian Gulf coast and on the al-Faw peninsula.
"Those operations were successful, but indeed there were some examples of the regime having set demolitions on oil (well) heads and blowing them," Brooks told reporters.
Fighting around southern Iraqi oil fields that U.S.-led forces had previously thought were secure drove away some civilian firefighters who were trying to tackle the blazing wells, an American firefighter said.
"It's not nearly as safe as they said it was," said Brian Krause of Texas-based Boots and Coots. "We're kind of sitting ducks out there."
U.S. Marines declared the Rumeila South oil fields unsafe for journalists to visit Monday, forcing the cancellation of a trip under Marine escort intended to give the media a firsthand view of the well fires.
"Coalition forces consider it to be secured. That doesn't meant that there's not still hostile fire going on in the region in small pockets of resistance," said U.S. military spokeswoman Maj. Randi Steffy.
Bouyabes, the Kuwaiti firefighter, said he planned to
coordinate with Krause and other foreign specialists on Tuesday. For now, his team is the only one with all
its water cannons, tanker trucks and other equipment in place and ready to use.
"I would love to take a shot at putting out all the fires in Rameila South, but I don't want to get greedy and claim all the credit," he said.
"The more teams that are involved, the faster we can put out the fires and stop an environmental disaster."
By BRUCE STANLEY and PATRICK McDOWELL
Associated Press Writers
Copyright 2003 Associated Press, All rights reserved |
