Transcript of YouTube Video: The Worst Oil Disaster Ever

it's like looking at the gateway to Hell

said one q80 literally from Horizon to

Horizon you can see smoke and fires one

the worst disasters I've ever seen

that's what we normally deal with we

just don't ever have 5 or 600 in a in a

row to work on we just have to be

careful make sure we had the right plan

when we attack the well and we'll take

them one at a time just like we did this

well here now where do you go from here

we'll go right down the road to the next

one

in February 1991 after the failed

invasion of Kuwait the retreating Iraqi

Army sabotaged more than 700 oil wells

the resulting fires stained the blue

desert skies black turning day into

night with the thick Subs saturated

smoke appearing like streaks of ink

across the planet from space an

ecological and economic disaster with a

practically endless supply of fuel the

fires could have raged for 45 years

without intervention and conditions were

worsening with every passing moment an

estimated 5 to 6 million barrels of oil

were lost to the fires for every single

day they raged with a per barrel cost of

around $18 the Q8 government was

hemorrhaging a million dollars every 13

to 16 minutes putting out a single oil

well fire is a challenge but the

situation in Kuwait would put

firefighting experts to their limits the

teams would need to navigate unexploded

ordinance littered in the war torn

deserts and not all of the oil erupting

from the ground was being burnt by the

gigantic 90 M tall Flames Lakes of toxic

oil quickly began to form around the

Flames which could catch light at any

moment making the firefighting operation

even more dangerous this was one of the

most complex firefighting operations

ever undertaken cuit is estimated to

have spent 25 billion dollars paying

firefighters and oil and gas workers to

stem the flow of their precious oil

these fires and the payday that was up

for grabs ignited a race between expert

firefighting teams from all over the

world the veteran Texas oil men gathered

in this hotel said they'll need hundreds

of workmen and it'll take at least a

year to put out the fires the cost a

billion and that's before any accounting

is made of the environmental price tag

however one team of 23 hungarians

arrived with a machine like no other a

custombuilt firefighting vehicle a tank

retrofitted with two massive jet engines

an incredible machine that played one

part in the massive fire fighting

operation in 1988 Iraq emerged from an

8-year war with Iran bruised battered

and economically crippled unable to pay

its debts it campaigned for OPEC to

increase the price of oil oil a move

that would help Iraq pay off its War

debts however Iraq claimed Kuwait had

done just the opposite surpassing its

production quotas causing oil prices to

drop and in August 1990 Iraq began its

conquest of Q8 however following a

six-month-long counter offensive by the

US and its allies Iraq's quest to claim

Kuwait's oil for itself came to an end

but their mission to increase oil prices

was not over as as they retreated they

sabotaged Q's oil production in a few

short days Iraq destroyed 85% of

Kuwait's oil wells early damage control

efforts had nothing to do with the

fires half buried in the sand un

exploded bombs around each well there

may be mines and booby traps all will

have to be cleared before the work can

start putting out the fires for almost a

month the 700 fires roared without

attention while the fields were clear

the military began clearing the way

using explosive Laden wires clearing

paths to the Wells however if there was

oil on the ground these explosives could

not be used and the mines were instead

buried with sand to create a safe

passageway by the end of the first year

more than a million mines and 600 tons

of unexploded Munitions had been cleared

fighting fires in a desert comes with a

logistical challenge there's no water

first off we're going to need massive

amounts of water once we get the water

in to where we can cool area and get in

close to it then we can start trying to

remove the damaged well head or possibly

even put the fires out you could stay

there all day long as long as you have

the water in the absence of the water

you couldn't stay there for a second in

order to fight the fires the teams

needed to pump millions of gallons of

water from the Sea by using the existing

pipelines the firefighters had access to

25 million gallons of seawater every day

with the water being pumped into

hundreds of man-made lagoons but getting

close enough to the fires to not only

spray this water accurately but to fix

the damaged oil infrastructure was

proving a massive challenge hardened

carbon-rich Mounds formed from cooked

oil were forming volcano likee

formations around the well heads

blocking access to the infrastructure

that needed to be repaired or plugged to

stop the flow of oil with flames too

close to the Mounds to safe ly cleared

the way the engineers and firefighters

on the ground needed a solution one

solution was to lower long steel tubes

with a crane onto the well head which

allowed the flame to be raised off the

ground and allowed teams to get close

enough to remove the mounts and begin

starving the flame of heat another

method was to starve the fires of oxygen

using explosives teams were stuffing

empty oil drums with plastic explosives

and slowly maneuvering them over the the

Flames where it would explode and

consume so much oxygen in the

surrounding air that the Flames would be

snuffed out but what would you rather do

slowly inch closer to a blazing fire

surrounded by lakes of oil with toxic

oil raining down from above with

kilogram of explosives or roll up to the

fire in an armored tank with two jet

engines adapted to become the world's

most powerful water cannons a team of 23

Hungarian fire Fighters showed up with

just that nicknamed big wind they

removed the turret from an old Soviet

t62 tank and replaced it with two jet

engines from the M 21 to prevent desert

sand debris tools birds or even

firefighters from being sucked into the

air intakes large fence boxes were

placed in front of them the driver

entered the tank from a small hatch

nestled between the two massive jet

engines the already cramped space needed

to be adap Ed to fit two tanks of

compressed air to allow the driver to

survive the toxic fumes surrounding the

fires and with visibility inside the

tank basically being non-existent and

with two jet engines less than a meter

away from each of their ears

communication with the driver was

extremely limited they were directed by

the commander Chief's joystick that

would light up two simple green and red

lights that would direct the driver

where to point the tank above the driver

and outside the tank the engine engine

operator sat on a platform controlling

the thrust of the engines once given the

all clear the crew would position the

tank just 8 m away from the fire

protected by a transparent heat shield

the operator would start the engines

which guzzled half a gallon of fuel

every second and generated 120 KES of

thrust from this position the operator

could see the three water nozzles that

sprayed

3,780 L of water every minute directly

into the exhaust of the engines the

machine was purpose built to put out oil

fires with an endless supply of fuel

erupting from the ground and the ground

so hot that it would reignite any fuel

that touched it putting out the flame

alone was not enough the firefighters

needed a way to cut the fuel off from

the flame and to rapidly cool the

surrounding area the extreme blast of

air and water would hit the column of

gushing oil with so much force that it

would cut straight through it robbing

the flame of more fuel and the immense

volume of water would remove enough heat

to ensure the flame could not restart

the thrust of the engines also had

enough power to dislodge the hardened

carbon buildup around the well head too

however the engines were designed to

intake frigid air in the upper

atmosphere not the hot dense Desert Air

this limited the machine to 20-minute

blasts to prevent overheating but even

with the 20-minute limit the Hungarian

team blew away expectations to

extinguish the fire the team only needed

12 to 40 seconds compared to the hours

it took using traditional methods

putting out the flame was just step one

of the process however the flow of oil

still needed to be stopped in Kuwait

most Wells extract oil from reservoirs

located between 120 and 2,100 M beneath

the ground these reservoirs contain not

only oil but also seawat and natural gas

compressed to 7,000 PSI when the well is

tapped these gases and liquids will flow

uncontrollably outwards driven by that

pressure an oil well is designed to

safely transport these precious

Commodities to the surface the bore

holes are lined with steel casings and

concrete to resist the pressure and to

prevent the oil from filtering into the

Earth on its way up and the top of these

steel pipes are topped with something

nicknamed a Christmas tree containing

pressure gauges and control valves this

Christmas tree is what the Iraqi Army

targeted and destroyed while the

majority of the wells they targeted were

successfully destroyed some remained

intact showing us how they were

destroyed we found just one that wasn't

following these Detonator wires to a

single well head it had been packed with

explosives by saddam's

troops the plastic explosive lying in

sandbags underneath

for some reason it hadn't gone off just

another Hazard facing the oil

firefighters before their job begins in

some fortunate cases the top broke off

cleanly ejecting the oil straight up the

clean brake provided a steady flow of

oil that burned effectively and steadily

these were easier to fight as the well

head was easier to see reach and block

however the majority of the wells did

not have a clean cut partially destroyed

trees sent oil flying in random

directions and cracks in the piping led

to oozing oil that collected cooked and

hardened around the well once the fires

were quenched the teams could move in to

cap the well if there was minimal

destruction and the pipes still held

their overall circular shape the teams

move forward with a device called a

stinger a stinger is a tapered

attachment that is inserted into the

well opening while oil still flows

sometimes even while it was still a

blaze this attack attachment was affixed

to the end of a crane and kill mud was

pumped through to control the flow kill

mud is made using regular drilling mud

or it's something called kill weight mud

made from dense substances like barite

and hematite on-site calculations based

on the flow rate and the pressure of the

well dictated how much of this material

was needed to exceed the hydrostatic

pressure of the well to block the flow

of oil for Wells with ir regular

openings larger grained mud was needed

to form a seal around the Stinger in

some cases the wells were too damaged

for even this and the structure needed

to be cut away first in total it took

more than 10,000 people to fight for

over 8 months to extinguish these fires

the Hungarian team actually arrived

quite late to the scene three teams from

Houston Texas and one from Canada were

the first on the scene they worked

together with the q80 firefighters for

the first few months however the slow

progress was frustrating the Q8

government as they watched their entire

economy erupt from the ground so by

August 1991 more teams were invited this

is when big wind arrived at the scene

the three Texas Crews capped a total of

357 Wells between them while the

Canadian team capped

176 the Canadians brought their own

specialized firefighting truck with its

own supply of water designed to use 90%

less water with the of dry firefighting

chemicals this allowed them to move

quickly and efficiently in an

environment where water was in short

supply the impressive looking big wind

machine in the end arriving later on the

scene and constrained by Logistics

managed to cap just nine Wells the q80

oil fires were one of the worst

ecological disasters in the history of

man for comparison the BP Deepwater

Horizon disaster of 2010 spilled 205 m

million gallons of oil into the Gulf of

Mexico and took almost a month to get

under control the Q8 oil fires caused

the loss of 42 billion gallons of oil

over 8 months an ecological disaster so

immense that over a quarter of a million

Veterans of the war have been affected

by its toxic effects with immeasurable

effects on the World At Large the story

of these firefighters is just one story

of thousands that came as a result of

the rule of Saddam Hussein Saddam

Hussein ruled Iraq for nearly a quarter

of a century and throughout that time he

initiated two enormous Wars that

resulted in the death of millions and

the International Coalition that formed

to stop him was the biggest since the

second world war the story of how this

man changed the world around him is

fascinating and is the subject of this

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