Gabriele Malvisi
When Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait in 1991, they left more than 700 oil wells burning in their wake. The fires took eight months to extinguish, spewing smoke plumes that stretched some 800 miles and spilling 11 million barrels of crude into the Gulf. It was one of the largest man-made environmental disasters on record. More than three decades on, the current US-Israeli war with Iran, which has seen oil infrastructure bombed across the region, has ignited fears of a comparable catastrophe.
“The 1991 Gulf War oil fires, while concentrated in Kuwait, were on a far greater scale than what we are seeing presently,” said Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK-based nonprofit.
No comments:
Post a Comment