Oil Wells

Oil prices shot up briefly yesterday on reports that three Iraqi oil wells had been torched, but soon resumed their downward slide to close at a three-month low of $28.12 a barrel. While news of possible sabotage brought flashbacks of burning Kuwaiti oil fields during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war, analysts said the markets apparently decided that the loss of three Iraqi wells was insignificant in a country with more than 1,500. "You're talking about an area where you have hundreds of wells," said Raad Alkadiri, an analyst at PFC Energy, a consulting firm in Washington.

There has been much discussion about offshore oil drilling as a means to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What is often ignored is the fact that offshore oil will be almost certainly be more expensive than the foreign oil we are currently buying. In a free market economy, who is going to buy more expensive oil just because it is domestic? Do we do that now with cheap plastic toys? No, we buy them from China and other countries where they can be made cheaper. The oil wells in the Middle East have been operating for decades with equipment that was paid for long ago. Offshore oil still has to be studied for the best drilling locations, test drills performed, and the expensive capital investments made to build the oil rigs.

GREATER BURGAN OIL FIELD, Kuwait -- The dirty red satchel was packed with sandbags hard against the wellhead, its explosive contents ready to light a geyser of fire.A detonator wire sneaked away from the charge. This one was not used. Or maybe it did not work. But 800 others did.In defeat the Iraqi army created fields of fire that will affect the world's environment and economy for years. It may take two years just to extinguish the oil wells that were exploded and set ablaze, according to Kuwaiti officials.

Oil prices shot up briefly yesterday on reports that three Iraqi oil wells had been torched, but soon resumed their downward slide to close at a three-month low of $28.12 a barrel. While news of possible sabotage brought flashbacks of burning Kuwaiti oil fields during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war, analysts said the markets apparently decided that the loss of three Iraqi wells was insignificant in a country with more than 1,500. "You're talking about an area where you have hundreds of wells," said Raad Alkadiri, an analyst at PFC Energy, a consulting firm in Washington.

WASHINGTON -- Allied military leaders vowed yesterday to go right on pounding Iraq's military, with no pause or cease-fire, right up to the point at which the coalition is satisfied that a withdrawal from occupied Kuwait has started and is not a ruse or feint.Smoke from burning oil fields covered 25 percent of Kuwait as U.S. forces fought clashes along the borders of Iraqi-held territory and prepared both for an Iraqi withdrawal and for the launch of an all-out ground war.The damaged oil fields were discovered by pilots and intelligence-gathering aircraft, the U.S. military command said.

BURGAN OILFIELD, Kuwait - At Kuwaiti Oil Co.'s Gathering Center 14, an oil storage tank leans drunkenly to one side like a collapsed top hat. Once-tidy pipelines that channeled Kuwaiti crude oil from dozens of wells now spiral and twist to all points of the compass. The earth is charred and brittle underfoot; an acrid scent still hangs in the air. The wreckage is the handiwork of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army, which blew up Kuwaiti oil installations like this one and torched more than 700 oil wells before fleeing across the border in the final days of the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The war in the Persian Gulf has caused an ecological calamity affecting a large chunk of Asia that experts say may take years to clean up.At least three separate slicks containing millions of gallons of crude oil have coated swaths of the Kuwaiti and Saudi coastline, killing marine life and threatening the commercial shrimp and fishing industries that are an important element of the economies of several gulf states.Dense, dark smoke from more than 600 burning oil wells in Kuwait hangs in a stinking, soupy pall over cities and farmland from Turkey to Iran, with predictions that plumes could reach northern India.

YES, OK, hurray for President Bush. He decided last week to spend $235 million to buy back oil and gas leases and thereby protect the beaches of Florida's Panhandle and 765,000 acres of the Everglades. It's the right thing to do, and it's popular, as well. Here's what's hard to figure out, though. The White House has pushed and pushed to allow oil companies to begin drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, though so far without success because of opposition in the Senate.

There has been much discussion about offshore oil drilling as a means to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What is often ignored is the fact that offshore oil will be almost certainly be more expensive than the foreign oil we are currently buying. In a free market economy, who is going to buy more expensive oil just because it is domestic? Do we do that now with cheap plastic toys? No, we buy them from China and other countries where they can be made cheaper. The oil wells in the Middle East have been operating for decades with equipment that was paid for long ago. Offshore oil still has to be studied for the best drilling locations, test drills performed, and the expensive capital investments made to build the oil rigs.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia - I could tell that Saudi Arabia had undergone a big change since I last visited when I checked into the Sheraton Hotel here and the desk clerk was a Saudi. Five years ago, the hotel owner would have been a Saudi but the clerks and key hotel personnel all would have been imported labor from the Philippines, Pakistan or Lebanon. Not anymore. Today, with the oil boom over, the Saudi economy can no longer afford the welfare net that once guaranteed every Saudi a government job. Since 1980, Saudi Arabia's population has exploded from 7 million to 19 million, thanks to one of the highest birthrates in the world and zero family planning.

Wanted: Workers to hose down 150-foot flames in combat zones while covered in crude oil. Must have experience using explosives in 3,000-degree infernos that collapse steel oil rigs, cook sand into glass and melt boots and hard hats. The roughnecks who could answer such ads are keeping their bags packed. Defense officials say they'll be needed overseas if war breaks out and Saddam Hussein sets fire to Iraq's 1,500 oil wells, as he did in Kuwait in 1991. "We're fixin' to be going over" said Ronnie Roles, president of operations at Cudd Pressure Control, which extinguished some of the 732 blazing wells in Kuwait.

BURGAN OILFIELD, Kuwait - At Kuwaiti Oil Co.'s Gathering Center 14, an oil storage tank leans drunkenly to one side like a collapsed top hat. Once-tidy pipelines that channeled Kuwaiti crude oil from dozens of wells now spiral and twist to all points of the compass. The earth is charred and brittle underfoot; an acrid scent still hangs in the air. The wreckage is the handiwork of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army, which blew up Kuwaiti oil installations like this one and torched more than 700 oil wells before fleeing across the border in the final days of the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

YES, OK, hurray for President Bush. He decided last week to spend $235 million to buy back oil and gas leases and thereby protect the beaches of Florida's Panhandle and 765,000 acres of the Everglades. It's the right thing to do, and it's popular, as well. Here's what's hard to figure out, though. The White House has pushed and pushed to allow oil companies to begin drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, though so far without success because of opposition in the Senate.

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia - I could tell that Saudi Arabia had undergone a big change since I last visited when I checked into the Sheraton Hotel here and the desk clerk was a Saudi. Five years ago, the hotel owner would have been a Saudi but the clerks and key hotel personnel all would have been imported labor from the Philippines, Pakistan or Lebanon. Not anymore. Today, with the oil boom over, the Saudi economy can no longer afford the welfare net that once guaranteed every Saudi a government job. Since 1980, Saudi Arabia's population has exploded from 7 million to 19 million, thanks to one of the highest birthrates in the world and zero family planning.

TITUSVILLE, Pa. - To think of the oil business is to think of such places as Saudi Arabia, the Caspian Sea, Alaska's arctic refuge, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It is probably not to think of this little town 40 miles southeast of Erie, where it happens that the whole enterprise began. This is where Edwin Drake struck oil in August 1859, using a previously ridiculed technique he invented, now known as drilling a well. At a mere 69.5 feet, it was the world's first commercially successful oil well, and was instantly copied as speculators and inventors poured into the region and boomtowns sprang up all across the valley.

BOLIVAR, N.Y. -- Some 135 years after New York state's first marketable oil for sale started flowing from a hole near here in western New York, the producers are trying to suck the last drops from wells producing on average a quarter of a barrel a day. Now, the few hundred people still employed face a threat that they say could bring the long history of New York state oil production to an end. State environmental authorities are requiring them to spend...

WASHINGTON -- A group of scientists, technicians and oilmen says it may have found a way to speed up the dangerous and slow-moving task of fighting the hundreds of booby-trapped oil fires in Kuwait -- by using super-high-pressure, jet-powered air nozzles to blast explosives and other obstructive debris from around the raging wellheads.The idea, described as "brilliant" by a Kuwait Petroleum Co. executive, could be in operation in Kuwait as early as this month: Scientists involved in the project were trying yesterday to arrange a test of a prototype jet air compressor that technicians in California have been developing for other purposes.

TITUSVILLE, Pa. - To think of the oil business is to think of such places as Saudi Arabia, the Caspian Sea, Alaska's arctic refuge, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It is probably not to think of this little town 40 miles southeast of Erie, where it happens that the whole enterprise began. This is where Edwin Drake struck oil in August 1859, using a previously ridiculed technique he invented, now known as drilling a well. At a mere 69.5 feet, it was the world's first commercially successful oil well, and was instantly copied as speculators and inventors poured into the region and boomtowns sprang up all across the valley.

Military doctors reported soon after the end of the Persian Gulf War that Marines had been exposed to hazardous hydrocarbons from burning oil wells, according to military documents.Military and civilian doctors also debated the health risks of crude oil during the airwar against Iraq. A report apparently distributed to military personnel on Feb. 22, 1991 -- two days before the ground war began -- described a battlefield rife with environmental hazards and suggested precautions that military personnel could take.

WASHINGTON -- A group of scientists, technicians and oilmen says it may have found a way to speed up the dangerous and slow-moving task of fighting the hundreds of booby-trapped oil fires in Kuwait -- by using super-high-pressure, jet-powered air nozzles to blast explosives and other obstructive debris from around the raging wellheads.The idea, described as "brilliant" by a Kuwait Petroleum Co. executive, could be in operation in Kuwait as early as this month: Scientists involved in the project were trying yesterday to arrange a test of a prototype jet air compressor that technicians in California have been developing for other purposes.