 It is February 1991 and the sky is black. The unfolding environmental disaster is not from a volcano or by accident, it's the burning of oil wells deliberately as a form of collective punishment by retreating army. In a rather literal case of a scorched earth policy, the black toxic smoke billowing into the air could be seen from low earth orbit from Landsat 5 as well as being seen by the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis during its STS-132 mission. Needless to say, the burning of hundreds of oil wells would turn out to be a bit of a health, financial and environmental hellscape. Today, I'm looking at the Kuwaiti oil filled fires and welcome to Plainly Difficult. So before this video, I only really had a cursory knowledge of the oil filled fires. When they were happening, I was more interested in Thompson Tank Engine than current affairs because I was a stupid two year old. It turns out that one of my favourite films, Three Kings, was actually set during his period of history. Again, I didn't notice when watching Ice Cube be Ice Cube because I was a stupid ten year old. Oil. So our story will focus on here. Kuwait. Now, I'm not going to delve too deep into Kuwaiti history as I'm not the best qualified to dig into its long and rich past. But we have to start our story somewhere. So I'll begin in the late 1930s and the country's discovery of a saleable quantity of oil. This would be the Bergen oilfield in the south east of the country. And more oil would also be found, bringing money into the country creating a boom period between the years of 1946 and 1982. The country had many, many oil wells, producing more oil than you can imagine, enough to run a hondering site until the inevitable heat death of the sun. So sitting on the whole load of oil can make your neighbours a little bit jealous, especially when one of your neighbours is a little bit cash strapped after taking part in a war. And also they'd borrowed money from you to fight that war. The country would be a rock. There was a big old bone of contention, well technically two bones between the neighbour countries. Two islands named Warbar and Boobian under the control of Kuwait. They were along the Kwa-Abt-Ala waterway to the Persian Gulf. When you look at this map you can see what the issue is. A rock doesn't have much access to the sea, it's mainly via the Shat-Alarab but it also has ports up the aforementioned Kwa-Abt-Ala waterway which acts as a border between Kuwait and Iraq. Possession of the Warbar and Boobian islands could afford a rock full ownership of the estuary as it joins the sea. Thus these islands became a point of multiple border disputes over the years. I should note that Kuwait had always had a long and complex history with its neighbour Iraq. In 1939 an uprising had erupted with the aim to align the nation with its neighbour. The rebellion was quashed by the Al-Sabah family with the help of the British. There had also been some saber-waving in 1961 when the then Iraqi Prime Minister claimed Kuwait as an integral part of Iraq but British soldiers on the ground put an Iraqi invasion off. Subsequent governments would eventually recognise Kuwait's independence until Saddam Hussein's rise to power. The new dictator meant a new view on the border. And although no move was made at least in the early years of Saddam's reign, he never would formally acknowledge Kuwait. During the 1980s Iraq was busy fighting a war with Iran which would end in 1988, leaving Iraq a little bit cash strapped, I mean wars aren't cheap. During the conflict Iraq had taken several loans from Saudi Arabia and also Kuwait, and the latter being owed some 14 billion US dollars. Around the same time both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were producing more oil than the organisation of petroleum exporting countries production quotas allowed. This depressed the price per barrel of oil from 18 dollars down to 10 dollars. This caused the Iraqi economy to take a big hit by reducing its income from its oil production, which after the war wasn't really ideal. Iraq started mentioning that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia should just cancel their debt, and on top of that Saddam Hussein posited that Kuwait was not only over producing oil but stealing it from right underneath Iraq's nose. This was from, apparently, is Rumalia oilfield, however the field did extend across the border forming Kuwait's Raqqa oilfield. The same claims that Kuwait had been drilling across under the border to harvest the oil, from the Rumalia oilfield. This was known as slant drilling, where the drill travels at an angle under the rig to tap into a reservoir. By early June 1990 Iraq began to threaten Kuwait. Relations between the two countries would decline and with the US coming in to support Kuwait, the clout of war were forming on the horizon. In August 1990, to the surprise of the international community, Iraq actually busted through the border with its troops, overrunning Kuwait in just a matter of hours. A US-led coalition, air and ground war began starting in January 16, 1991, ending with an Iraqi defeat and retreat from Kuwait on the 28th of February 1991 the same year. So I'm going to skip past the details about the actual war as it probably needs a video in its own right, but Iraq during this war would fight dirty, I mean air dirty. Okay it doesn't really make much sense, but regardless it takes us on to the next part of the video, the oil fires. So as the air war began on the 16th of January, Iraqi soldiers under the orders of Saddam Hussein started blowing some of Kuwait's oil wells. Explosives had been placed around the oilfields reportedly as early as December 1990. It was thought that the Iraqi forces had set the initial wells alike as a kind of smoke screen to hinder air and precision guided weapons operations. It also had the side effect of punishing Kuwait for its overproduction of oil, but the initial fires were just the tip of the iceberg, as the full scale of the coalition successes became apparent to the Hussein regime, more and more oil wells would be set alight. After coalition forces had reigning air superiority, Iraq released oil into the Persian Gulf. The initial fires by February could be seen from space, it was going to get a whole lot worse when coalition troops would cross the border from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. On the 24th of February 1991, coalition forces pushed into Kuwait and Iraq, in just four days the war would be over, but oh my a lot of those oil fields would be set alight. As the Iraqi forces were pushed back, around 700 oil wells would be put on fire or damaged. Some of the fires would last for the best part of 10 months. Almost as soon as the war had ended, efforts would begin in trying to put out the fires, as well you know, it's pretty bad for the environment. It also wasn't too good for the army in the desert, as the burning oil produced 133 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 2.3 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide as well as others. As stated in Sadiq M and McCain J, 1993's paper The Gulf War Aftermath and Environmental Tragedy. Service personnel in the theatre showed signs of short term particulate exposure. This was as the VA association website states, Skin irritation, runny nose, cough, shortness of breath, eye, nose and throat irritation, aggravation of sinus and asthma conditions. Although a number of reports in the 1990s and early 2000s reported no excess long term respiratory conditions, as noted in Tyler C. Smith et al. 2002 and Jeffrey L. Langer et al. 2002, and the final report Kuwait Oil Fire Health Risk Assessment of 1994. I should state that this is only for US Army personnel. The latter would state the results of his HRA indicate the potential for significant long term adverse health effects for the exposed DD troop and civilian employee populations is minimal. Although for local residents they would have to deal with not just the toxic air but the contaminated soil and contaminants working their way into their drinking water. Unburned oil discharged from the damaged wells created around 300 oil lakes. As it sunk below ground level it contaminated around 40 million tons of sand. Temperatures dropped over the most effective areas due to the smoke from the fires absorbing between 75 and 80% of the sun's radiation. The smoke reached a height of 20,000 feet and dissipated into the atmosphere. But what about stopping the fires? Putting out the fires. Estimates at the time were if that they were left many oil wells could burn up to 5 years before the pressure would be reduced enough to stop fueling any fires. As such a human intervention was needed. Once the guns stopped firing a different kind of fighting had begun. The fire fighting kind. But the focus was initially on the gushing not the burning wells. As well you don't really want more oil fires do you? The first set of fires were extinguished in early April 1991. This was by using high pressure seawater. For some areas a constant supply of water was unavailable and here liquid nitrogen was employed. Another method was to dig a relief well alongside a burning one but at a safe distance. The two drillings would then be connected. This created an additional point for the oil to gush which would in turn reduce the pressure on the burning one and thus make it easier to extinguish. Explosives were used to put out some of the wells by interrupting the oxygen and oil supplies to the fire, thus also extinguishing it. Another method was to simply blow out the fire. Like you do with a candle on a cake. Simple. Well in theory yes but in reality it is actually a hell of a lot more interesting. So what generates a lot of wind apart from me after a curry? Well how about jet engines? Well one team made use of meg engines attached to a top of a tank. They then drove said tank up to the oil well and fired up the engine which then blew the flames out. Around nine fires were put out using this method. Eventually by the 6th of November 1991 the final oil well was capped off. In all one billion barrels of oil was thought to be lost during the fires costing over $150 billion but the costs would be far more. The infrastructure damage and environmental contamination. A rock was ordered to pay $52 billion in reparations to create and this would eventually be paid in full in 2021. The disaster has gone down in history as one of the worst environmental, at least man-made environmental disasters in history. This is a planarfoot production. All videos on the channel were created with comments that were used in satellite licences. Played with what videos were produced by me, John, in a currently very foggy and wet corner of southern London UK. I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel to check them out if you want to see other things I get up to. And I'd like to have a very nice warm thank you to my Patreon and YouTube members for your financial support. As well as a recipe for tuning in every week to listen to me talk and watch my dodgy cartoons. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please.