Crude insult Recovery is slow from a Gulf War act of vandalism

Oilwells set alight by Iraqi forces in 1991 were put out within months, but insidious pollution still mars the desert

- Richa Syal

For 10 months in Kuwait, everything was upside down. Daytime was full of darkness from thick smoke, and the nights were bright from the distant glow of burning oilwells. When Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, in a bid to gain control over the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East and pay off a massive debt accrued from Kuwait, he was forced into retreat by a US coalition, which began an intensive bombing campaign.

As Iraqi forces pulled out, they set more than 700 oil wells ablaze. Thirty years on, Kuwait is still scarred by one of the world’s worst environmental catastrophes – and the billions set aside for remediation are still waiting to be spent. “The sound of gushing oil and roaring fires is still in my memory,” says Samira Omar Asem, the principal research scientist at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (Kisr).

The wells burned uncontrollably. The smoke plume above them stretched for 1,300km, and 11m barrels of crude oil poured into the Gulf, creating a slick 15km long. Nearly 300 oil lakes formed on the desert surface. An international coalition of firefighters battled for months until the last well was capped on 6 November 1991 and Kuwait celebrated under a clear sky.