PARIS, 22 March 2003 — Burning Iraqi oil well fires could be harder to put out than ones in Kuwait after the first Gulf War because the Iraqi wells operate at higher pressure, a director of the French IFP oil institute warned yesterday.
“The problem with the Iraqi wells is that they have a much higher flow than the Kuwaiti ones that were on fire or damaged in 1991,” said Nathalie Alazard, the IFP’s director of economic studies.
“These wells operate at higher pressure because only a small fraction of their oil has so far been extracted. These wells have a flow that is between twice and ten times as big as Kuwait’s,” she said.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said yesterday that “as many as 30 oil wells” had been deliberately set on fire by Iraqi forces in the south of the country, but he added there appeared to have been no systematic effort to destroy them all.
He was speaking as US and British troops were reported to be fighting for control of the oil fields in northern and southern Iraq.
The consequences of the oil well fires, and the time it will take to put them out, will depend on several factors, according to the IFP. The smoke released by the fires could constitute a problem for US-led military operations in the area, Alazard said. “But it depends whether the burning wells are close together, and on weather conditions.”
She said the fires could only be dealt with by specialized companies capable of extinguishing the flames and closing the wells.
Teams working on burning wells had several techniques available to them, and would judge which approach to take on a “case-by-case basis”, Alazard said.
“Often you start by injecting water or cooling the area around the well. In 1991, the temperature around the burning wells often reached 300 to 400 degrees.
“Next you have to extinguish the flames, for example with a controlled explosion, before closing the well. It’s a job that has to be done by hand, so it’s very dangerous.”
Another technique was to drill a second shaft into the burning well below ground, Alazard said, diverting the crude erupting out of the ground and reducing the pressure and flow of oil to the fire at the mouth of the main well, making it easier to extinguish the flames and close the well.
In cases where the oil field fires are too fierce to tame, Alazard said, the best approach might simply be to leave the fires burning.
“These are wells that really gush, with a very fast flow,” she said.
“If it comes to the crunch, it’s better to leave a well on fire than to blow out the flame in a way that makes it impossible to close the well again, thus creating lakes of oil in the desert,” she added.
However, prolonged fires could cause significant environmental damage, Alazard said. “The smoke and gas is of course very harmful.”
But so far, with around 30 wells reported burning, Alazard remains hopeful that catastrophe can be averted. If the fires are limited to 30 wells, the effects will not be too bad,” she said. “During the invasion of Kuwait, between 700 and 800 were damaged, and around 600 of those were set on fire.”
