Close to 700,000 oil wells caught fire. These ablaze oil wells produce a pollution cloud of unprecedented density and concentration. Few days ago, the British Prime Minister, John Major, could not land in Kuwait airport owing to black clouds in the area. He had this to say: "It was a frightful sight... it was as if we lived in permanent darkness." The black cloud caused by the fire covers an area almost half that of the United States territory. An unprecedented fact, temperature in Kuwait dropped by 10 degrees.
The equivalent of more than six million barrels of fuel are lost each day, representing $ 120 million, or close to $ 4 billion dollars a month, twice the annual gross national product of Morocco. According to Greenpeace, the situation is such that some of the region's inhabitants are suffering from choking and suffocation. A Greenpeace expert adds that Gulf waters will soon cause deadly diseases, such as cancer, which will affect procreation.
Most of the well-to-do people who had returned to Kuwait quickly left it again, fleeing the highly dangerous pollution for healthier environments. Western experts indicated that this Gulf Tchernobyl was by far more serious than that of the U.S.S.R. According to the French environment association "Les amis de la terre" (Friends of the Earth), 50 to 70 years will elapse before the traces of this oil pollution may disappear.
Approximately three years of continuous effort will be needed to put out the fire. Extinguishing the fire in each oil well will cost tens of thousands of dollars. 160 kilometers of pipes will be installed to carry sea-water to cool the sand. In the proximity of oil wells, sand has begun to melt in areas where temperatures reach 200 degrees, which is 100 degrees more than the temperature of boiling water. Such is the Gulf Tchernobyl!
Europe is faced with the Gulf environmental tragedy it has brought about
with its intense aggressive intervention in a matter which could well have
been settled among Arabs, around a negotiation table. Western scientists
say that the impact on the Gulf climate will be felt even in some European
regions during the ten years to come. Black rain will fall in Eastern Europe,
and very soon, black dust will fall in Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece... In
other words, acid rain produced by the Gulf pollution will fall up to 2,000
kilometers away from Kuwait. If Gulf winds are as strong at the end of
March as they usually are, toxic rains will fall in Europe in April.
Turkey has already experienced this environmental specter. The mayor of the Turkish city of Halkay said that daylight in his province was not as bright as before, that rain acidity rates were very high and that this would affect drinking water sources. The situation will have adverse effects on the agricultural economy of semi-arid regions in Iran and the Middle East.
To enable the average European to better understand the situation, the
German expert Karl Heinz Palschreiter explained that the pollution in Kuwait
was comparable to the pollution caused by 500 deficient waste incineration
factories. He added that what happened in the Gulf was a chemical experience
unknown to mankind until then and that the necessary lessons must be drawn
from it.
March 13, 1991
* Al Khadra, Tangiers, March 15, 1991.