Ecological calamity will linger for years
NYT, Reuter
RIYADH — The Persian Gulf war has caused an ecological calamity affecting a large chunk of Asia, and experts have said it would take years to clean up.
At least three separate slicks containing millions of litres of crude oil have coated swaths of the Kuwaiti and Saudi coastline, killing marine life and threatening the commercial fishing industries that are important to the economies of several Gulf states.
Dense, dark smoke from 950 burning oil wells in Kuwait hangs in a stinking, soupy pall over cities and farmland from Turkey to Iran, with predictions that plumes could reach northern India.
The cause :
Three oil sticks containing millions of litres of crude oil.
Dense, dark smoke spewing from 950 burning oil wells.
The fires have spewed tonnes of toxic chemicals into the air, prompting doctors to gear up for respiratory illnesses and farmers to fear for crops tainted by greasy rains washing cancer-causing particles from the sky.
"The ecology of the Persian Gulf is hurting pretty badly right now," said Mr William Moomaw, director of the Centre for Environmental Management at Tufts University. "The level of air pollution from the burning oil wells exceeds by hundreds of times the most polluted areas of the world."
Said senior researcher Michael Renner of the World-watch Institute: "Atmospheric pollution on this scale has never occurred before."
He estimated that between 2.5 million and three million barrels a day of oil, twice what Kuwait was producing before the war, was burning out of control from the oil-well fires set deliberately by Iraq or by bombs dropped by allied planes.
Worldwatch calculated that the fires were sending 765,000 tonnes of soot into the atmosphere each day, at times turning day into night closest to the oilfields and sending thick clouds of black smoke billowing up to 1,600 km away.
In a year, the burning oil could produce about 3 million tonnes of sulphur, a principal component of acid rain, according to Worldwatch.
For the most part, environmentalists have watched the fouling unfold from the sidelines of a zone where the war was fought. With hostilities ending, cleanup specialists are rushing to stem the fires and scoop up what remains of the spills.
But many of the oil wells now ablaze produce by natural pressure, not by mechanical pumps, and are extremely difficult and dangerous to extinguish.
The outlook is also gloomy at sea, where smoke from the burning wells and the danger of floating mines have hampered efforts by spotter planes to map the oil spills and dispatch oil-skimming ships to suck them up.
Only about 24.5 million litres have been recovered from the main spill, which the Saudis originally estimated to be 2 billion litres. Between 66 million 300 million litres and 1 billion litres are still floating, with the remainder having evaporated, sunk In a suffocating mantle over coral reefs, or washed ashore onto mud flats and marshes that serve as habitats for scores of marine species.
The oil fouls only a portion of the gulf, but from virtually any point along the coastal region, the dark billowing clouds of noxious smoke are unmistakable.
A visitor to Kuwait City on Thursday was greeted with pitch-black skies at 2 pm. Cars drove with headlights on and some residents carried flashlights to find the nearest celebration of the Iraqi defeat.
Reports from Baghdad said a sepulchral fog shrouded the city for much of last week
and dirty clouds strung across the skies of western Iran for nearly 1,500 km.
The governor of Adana state in Turkey, Mr Birsin Ozen, ordered residents last week not to use rainwater or let their animals drink it.
Since there is no precedent for burning so much oil in a relatively confined area, no one knows what the long-term environmental effects will be.
Most scientists said it is unlikely that the fires would have a global impact on the climate by darkening skies sufficiently to lower temperatures worldwide. But there could be a serious problem of cooling and rainfall disruption for farmers in Iran and the Indian subcontinent.
In a report issued in January, the British government’s meteorological office said soot-induced cooling could reduce the monsoon rains critical to agriculture in the in the region --- NYT, Reuter.
Source : The Straits Times, 4th March 1991
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