Kuwait Oil Company

Iraqi Invasion Destruction of Oil Wells and Facilities

On August 2nd 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and inflicted heavy and devastating damages in the country's various economic, industrial, and infrastructure sectors. Of which, the oil sector was the most devastated sector of all. The extent of the destruction inflicted in oil installations and facilities was unprecedented in the history of modern oil industry.

The destruction inflicted on the oil installations and facilities was devastating and widespread. The first step taken by Kuwait Oil Company's management was to conduct an exhaustive survey of the damage sustained in the production areas. After determining the extent of damage, remedial measures began.

An estimated 80% of the oil wells had been ignited, and ten gathering centres were totally destroyed. The amount of destruction in other areas varied from centre to centre. The gas booster stations and oil tank farms underwent varying degrees of damage, while 13 tanks in the South Tank Farm and 8 in the North Tank Farm were destroyed. The Sea Island facilities were also totally destroyed, and the North and South Piers required extensive repair and restoration work.

The Kuwait Oil Company employees who remained in Kuwait during the occupation could only watch in horror at the scale of the destruction. No one thought it possible the damage could be controlled, let alone repaired. But elsewhere in the world, other members of KOC had been preparing since shortly after the invasion for any contingency. Their efforts were named "Al Awda Project" - The Return.

Kuwait Oil Company teams in the United States of America, Europe, and Gulf Council Countries worked on the Al Awda project. They secured the contracts, equipment and personnel necessary to combat the environmental disaster, and to assist in the restoration of production facilities to enable the production of oil and refined products for local consumption.

After the successful completion of the "Al Awda" phase, the Project was renamed "Al Tameer" - The Reconstruction. The focus of the Kuwait Oil Company's efforts moved towards the rehabilitation of eighteen damaged Gathering Centres, and the restoration of oil production to pre-war levels. Additional efforts were concentrated on the recovery and treatment of an estimated 20 million barrels of weathered crude oil from approximately 240 surface oil lakes, the rebuilding of over 40 storage and process tanks, and the refurbishment of the oil export facilities.

Kuwait Wild Well Killers Team

Top

History

The Team was formed on the ninth of September, 1991 fight the fires set in the oil wells after Kuwait’s liberation in 1991. The Kuwait Fire Team was able in to set a world record of only twelve minutes to extinguish the first burning well. It astonished observers in their ability to control one of the most dangerous and difficult oil fire at the “Greater Burgan 160“ that was torched and sabotaged by the former Iraqi regime during its occupation of Kuwait from 1990 until being defeated by the allied forces in 1991.

The team was made of individuals with multiple specializations; fire fighters, drilling operators, petroleum engineers, support servicemen and safety engineers. Among a large number of other teams who reached Kuwait from all over the world to help extinguish the torched oil wells, KFT succeeded to put out the first well on the 11th of September, 1991 west of Um-Ghadir, then moved on to deal with the wells east of Um-Ghadir. After that, the team joined other fire teams and succeeded in extinguishing the largest oil well, “Burgan 160.

The team was working 14-hours days, and with the members’ zealous and enthusiasm, it was able to reduce the time needed to extinguish a burnt oil well in one day and two hours only, while other teams from all over the world were taking three days and eight hours for each well.

To put out a single oil well completely it needed a process that involved many phases. First, the site was prepared and combed, mines and barb wires were removed from the areas surrounding the well, and its nearby oil lakes were emptied. All of this was to allow the land to recover its nature and solidity.

The second phase consisted of extinguishing the well, cleaning its head after precise inspection, examination and preparing all the necessary equipment and measurements. The extinguishing process was carried out either by oil pumping or by installing a piece inside the wellhead that is already existed during the oil flow.

After the second phase, the well was sprayed with cooled water pumped for a long period of time. The third phase concerns mainly repairing the wellhead and preparing it for reproduction operations. Three wells in average were extinguished daily, and the maximum number of wells were controlled in one day was thirteen.

Members

Top

	Serial	Name	Kuwait Fires 1991	Iraq Fires 2003
	1	Eng. Essa Abdulla Bo-Yabes - Team Leader	x	x
	2	Eng. Shabib Nasser Al-Ajmi - Deputy Team Leader	x	x
	3	Eng. Sarah Husain Akbar	x	x
	4	Mahmoud Essa Al-Somali	x	-
	5	Ali Husain Haji Asad	x	x
	6	Jasem Hajji Al-Ghais	x	x
	7	Yacoub Mohammad Al-Kandari	x	-
	8	Adnan Abdul-Nabi Al-Sayyed	x	-
	9	Abdullatif Abdulla Al-Rabah	x	x
	10	Abdul-Karim Jarallah Al-Sharifi	x	-
	11	Abdul-Qader Mohammad Abdul-Rahman	x	x
	12	Ayad Mohammad Al-Kandari	x	x
	13	Abdul-Wahab Abdul-Nabi Al-Sayyad	x	x
	14	Jasem Abdul-Aziz Al-Khamis	x	x
	15	Abdullatif Ali Husain	x	x
	16	Turki Obaid Fahad	x	x
	17	Yacoub Hasan Abdulla	x	x
	18	Sulaiman Mohammad Hasan	x	x
	19	Haidar Abbas Haidar	x	x
	20	Sami Abdulla Al-Yaqout	x	x
	21	Bader Hasan Ali Al-Khabbaz	x	-
	22	Ahmad Ali-Abdul-Rahim	x	x
	23	Bader Jawher Ahmad	x	x
	24	Eshaq Khalil Abulhasan	x	x
	25	Ali Gholoum Husain	x	x
	26	Homoud Khiran Al-Harbi	x	-
	27	Samir Abdul-Mohsen Mohammad	x	x
	28	Ahmad Abdul-Rahman Malek	x	x
	29	Riyadh Mohammad Nouri	x	-
	30	Fares Ahmad Al-Mansouri	x	x
	31	Jasem Husain Al-Hammadi	x	x

Achievements Kuwait Oil Well Fires (1991)

Top

Of the 700 oil wells that were torched and blasted by the former Iraqi regime before its defeat in 1991, KWWK was able to extinguish 41 wells. This was achieved as a result of the members’ experiences gained from practical and theoretical training courses in and outside the State of Kuwait, further to their weekly training in dealing with concocted burned wells.

Al-Rumaila Oil Wells Fires in Iraq (2003)

KWWK extinguished the fires of A1 & A2 wells in Al-Rumailah oil field in Southern Iraq that was torched by the former Iraqi regime in order to impede the advancement of Allied troops. Such participation was based on a political decision by the government aiming to protect Iraqi natural resources in addition to protecting the Iraqi environment from devastation and pollution. Exerting their efforts to extinguishing those fires.

KWWK confronted many difficulties; the most important one was bad weather conditions due to sand storms that reduced the visibility to few meters. Also, the team had to overcome the dangerous nature of the place because of mines & explosives that was scattered all in addition to the fact that the area was not secure militarily especially in the first few days of the war.

However, the most difficult problem was lack of the water used needed to douse the fire. The numbers of burning oil wells at Al-Rumailah reached 6 wells. The fires were set in the wells in a manner similar to those set in Kuwaiti oil wells by the former Iraqi regime in 1991.

In order to overcome the problem of providing KWWK with the adequate water supply required to extinguish the fires in the middle of the desert, four water tanks each of 16,500 Gallon were built in the area. Then, anther seven tanks were added for a total of 11 tanks. However Tank – Extinguish method was replaced by water ponds methods, as the pumping capability from the tanks was weak and limited due to its mechanic setting. The ponds had a size of 4 x 18 x 45 with the capacity of about 300,000 gallons.

In spite of all these difficulties, KWWK succeed in extinguishing, in a short time, the fires in A1 – A2 wells, adding another achievement to their record.

The environmental disaster that the Iraqi aggression left behind on Kuwaiti soil is considered one of the worst environmental disasters ever witnessed. 700 oil wells spread across the country were simply torched and destroyed, leading to oil spills on land. As a result, more than 300 oil lakes were formed, and it was estimated that about 22.5 million barrels of extractable oil were spilled, a number that reached 23.5 million barrels due to the heavy rains of 1991.

Kuwait Oil Company tried its best to stop these lakes from spreading, by building sand barriers (bund walls), and then started the oil recovery operations. Dealing with these oil lakes started with the formulation of a strategy straight at the liberation of Kuwait, and during the earliest stages of extinguishing the fire wells. These steps can be summarized in containing the gushing oil from reaching residential areas, main roads, important ports, and then the recovery operation started as follows:

* Pumping a great deal of the recovered oil to the Gathering Center directly or after it was treated in two special units built to that purpose in the fields, Field treatment Center (FTC-1 & 2), and which began operation in July 1991.

* The treatment of a bigger quantity of oil at the Refinery Treatment Center (RTC).

* Pumping and exporting part of the recovered as untreated oil, where the first cargo was exported in
September 1992.

Extracting oil from these lakes proved a difficult endeavor, creating several problems of which:

* The atmospheric condition that the oil was directly affected by starting 1991. These conditions lead
to the oil losing its light characteristics, and components, turning into heavy, viscous oil, totally
worthless economically. Thus, its export program was halted, and the efforts were restricted to
primary processing at the field treatment center (FTC_1&2) in the fields. From there, it was
introduced to the crude oil system at the Gathering Centers.