Pentagon has reports Iraqi oil wells ablaze
Thursday, March 20, 2003 Posted: 12:30 PM EST (1730 GMT)
 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that the Pentagon has received reports that Iraqi forces have set "as many as three or four" oil wells ablaze in southern Iraq, near the Kuwaiti border.

"We are attempting to get additional information on that," he said at a news conference. Pentagon officials told CNN that the fires are at well heads and not in oil-filled trenches.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has ordered oil wells to be set ablaze in the past. After his forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and coalition forces were massing together to force them out, Saddam said if he had to be evicted from Kuwait by force, then Kuwait would be burned.

Just as promised, Iraqi troops set fire to more than 700 oil wells in several Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 as they were retreating from the country. Officials from the Kuwait Oil Company reported that all of Kuwait's oil fields had been damaged or destroyed by the Iraqis.

The United States helped Kuwait in an international nine-month effort to extinguish the blazing wells.

Before the fires, Iraq was responsible for intentionally releasing some 11 million barrels of oil into the Arabian Gulf from January to May 1991, oiling more than 800 miles of Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian coastline. The amount of oil released was categorized as 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and twice as large as the previous world record oil spill. The cost of cleanup was estimated at more than $700 million.

CNN.com - Pentagon has reports Iraqi oil wells ablaze - Mar. 20, 2003

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