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Developments in Iraq's Oil Fields .c The Associated Press THE OIL FIELDS: Firefighters in the Rumeila South oil field were pumping water into man-made lagoons on Thursday, preparing to again attack the two remaining fires at oil wells. Teams from Boots & Coots International Well Control and the Kuwait Oil Co. failed to put out the blazes earlier this week because they lacked sufficient water. Both teams then gave up using water tanks and instead dug lagoons to hold more water. They expected to be ready to battle the fires on Friday, said Aisa Bouyabes, the Kuwaiti team leader. Rumeila...

Lagoon May be Needed to Tackle Oil Fires By BRUCE STANLEY .c The Associated Press A shortage of water and an equipment failure prevented firefighters on Monday from quenching the last fires raging at sabotaged oil wells in one of Iraq's biggest oil fields. American and Kuwaiti firefighters working in Iraq's Rumeila South field still hope to put out the remaining two fires within a week, but the setbacks could delay their timetable. ``If I don't get more than 45 minutes of water, we'll be here 'til the next war,'' said Brian Krause, president of Boots & Coots International Well...

Kuwait, 29 March: The American oil fire fighting team has [put] out a second burning well in Iraq's Al-Rumaylah oilfield in the south of the country Saturday morning [29 March], a Kuwait oil source said. The source told Kuwait News Agency that he saw the American firefighters dousing the well known as A4 this morning. This is the second well extinguished by teams working to cap a number of wells set ablaze by the Iraqi regime forces before withdrawing from parts of southern Iraq as coalition forces advanced northwards. The first blazing oil well in Al-Rumaylah was capped by the...

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar - Coalition aircraft and artillery destroyed several Iraqi armored vehicles that streamed out of the besieged city of Basra overnight, the top British commander in the Gulf said Thursday. Air Marshal Brian Burridge said he didn't have specifics on how many of the estimated 120 tanks and armored personnel carriers heading south out of Basra toward British troops were destroyed, or what type of weaponry was used against them. British pool reports said U.S. Navy (news - web sites) F-18 Super Hornets and Royal Air Force Harrier ground attack jets...

KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- Fighting around the southern Iraq oil fields that U.S.-led forces had previously thought were secure has driven out civilian firefighters trying to put out the oil well blazes, the top firefighter said Monday. ``It's not nearly as safe as they said it was,'' said Brian Krause, vice president and senior blowout specialist for Houston-based Boots and Coots. ``We're kind of sitting ducks out there.'' The Iraqi resistance in the oil fields challenges U.S. claims that southern Iraq is quickly falling under allied control. U.S. Marines declared the southern Rumailah oil fields in Iraq unsafe for journalists...

Hellfighters measured the temperature at the core of one of the 600 blazing oil wells during the first U.S. war against Iraq at 3,051 degrees, twice the heat needed to melt steel. Fifty feet away, the temperature on the ground was still a toasty 950 degrees, hot enough to sap most of the strength from steel. But according to veteran Asger "Boots" Hansen, oil-well firefighters save their own strength for the most dangerous moment: when the fire goes out. The biggest threat is what those in the business call the "unexpected vapor cloud," which can ignite at any time, even...

Signs of Sabotage Found at Iraq Oil Wells By BRUCE STANLEY and PATRICK McDOWELL .c The Associated Press KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Firefighters attacking blazes at oil wells in southern Iraq say they've found telltale signs the valuable field was sabotaged. But it appears Iraqi troops may have disobeyed orders to blow up the wells or prepared explosives that were too weak to do serious damage. It took Kuwaiti firefighters only 15 minutes and two water cannon Monday to snuff out the first fire quenched so far at a booby-trapped Iraqi oil well. Kuwait's senior firefighter, Aisa Bouyabes, said he...

Kuwaitis douse first Iraqi oil fire in south By Angus MacSwan KUWAIT, March 24 (Reuters) - Kuwaiti firefighters doused on Monday the first of seven oil wells blazing in Iraq's vast southern Rumaila field as sporadic guerrilla-style resistance by armed Iraqis continued nearby. "We have just finished putting out the fire and are in the process of capping the well," a senior Kuwaiti oil official told Reuters. A crack team from Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is now tackling six other wellheads on fire at the southern end of the 50-mile-long Rumaila oilfield near the border with Kuwait. The team, which...

Fears that Iraqi oil wells set alight by Saddam Hussein's thugs will create an ecological cataclysm are overstated if the record of the Kuwaiti oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War in 1991 is any indication. Observing the carnage created when Saddam's retreating army set fire to 732 Kuwaiti oil wells, the late Carl Sagan and other top scientists predicted that the blazing wells would create enormous clouds of black soot which would rise up to the stratosphere, encircle the planet and block out the Sun's rays and bring on a form of nuclear winter, the Wall...

<p>Greenpeace claims, "Fires from 600 deliberately damaged Kuwaiti oil wells … created a blanket of soot, gases and aggressive chemicals [that] led to immediate respiratory problems in local populations and generated serious long-term risks of birth defects and cancer in exposed people."</p>

<p>KUWAIT CITY -- When Ahamed Abdullah was born on Feb. 26, 1991, his every breath brought worry to his family. The air was so thick with toxic smoke from burning oil wells that noon was midnight in Kuwait.</p> <p>Abdullah was born on the day that allied forces drove the Iraqi invaders from Kuwait, a date that Kuwaitis celebrate as Liberation Day. But there won't be true liberation, they say, as long as Saddam Hussein controls Iraq.</p>