By Joe Vialls
Despite strong protests from a multitude of countries including Egypt and Syria, the Bush administration is still considering further "military" action against Iraq. The last US excursion up the Persian Gulf resulted in the destruction of major oil fields, and the deaths of 70,000 innocent women and children. If the Bush administration has a second go and accidentally drops a stray napalm pod on northern Kuwait, it could trigger an explosion that would make a 50 megaton "nuke" look like a firecracker casually thrown on the fourth of July.
When the firefighters returned from Kuwait last November, they forgot to tell the world about the large number of high pressure wells that were still spewing crude oil and gas onto the ravaged landscape. They also forgot to explain how oilmen were to cap high pressure wells that would eventually be awash in huge lakes of crude oil bubbling with explosive gas.
Under normal circumstances in the west, oilmen always stop the oil flow before putting out the fire. In the case of almost every blowout that has not ignited spontaneously in the past, fires have been deliberately lit to burn off the oil and gas — keeping it clear of the well control crews while they stopped the oil flow. In Kuwait, though, the reverse technique was used for reasons that have not yet been made clear.
A week after the emir of Kuwait threw the switch that stopped the last fire, the British New Scientist sounded a delicate warning about non-burning gushers, and commented on oil lakes:
"In the northern oilfield, many small lakes have run together to form rivers that stretch for many kilometres."
One of those small lakes is known to be about a metre deep and measures eight by five kilometres. It sounds quite small and shallow until figures are fed into a computer, revealing a volume in excess of 230 million barrels of crude oil. Like other small lakes and rivers that surround it, the crude oil can hold up to about 25% gas. Exactly the same sort of gas that reduced the North Sea Piper Alpha drilling platform to a twisted, charred mass of steel in second.
As the Bush administration girds itself for another onslaught on Iraq, the increasing ambient air temperatures in the Middle East ensure the silent release of an ever increasing amount of gas from the lakes to the atmosphere, steadily forming a gas cloud of truly mammoth proportions.
Things will get a wee bit risky when US fighter-bombers streak across the area, on the way from the Gulf to kill a few more thousand women and children. If a single fighter-bomber flies through the edge of that gas cloud with its afterburners glowing white-hot, or if a e wrong switch and releases napalm pods into the lake, we have all the ingredients for the world's biggest bomb. To even begin to comprehend the magnitude of what might happen at that point, it is necessary to understand how the American FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) weapon works, for the general principle is exactly the same.
The FAEs used by the US military in Kuwait and Iraq during the conflict were so large that no known bomber could lift them. Instead, each fat 15,000 pound monster was shoved out of a C130 transport plane.
Each FAE is filled with a mixture of liquefied gas and stabilising chemical, in the middle of which is a rather special small package.
After leaving its C130 transport plane, the FAE falls under a drag parachute before bursting open at a predetermined altitude, releasing the liquid gas, which immediately evaporates into a gas cloud, "stabilised" by the toxic chemical component, with the intent of achieving a "gas in air" content of about 5%.
While this is happening, the special package is slowly falling through the cloud itself, under its own parachute. The instant its internal gas sensor detects that the gas/air ratio is just right, it closes a circuit that fires a white hot incendiary mounted directly beneath.
In a millisecond, the cloud explodes with sufficient force to reduce stone buildings to dust over an area of some two to three kilometres. Further out from the blast, oxygen is torn from the atmosphere so fast to feed the explosion, all humans in range have their lungs ripped out through their mouths instantly.
The Bush administration and the Pentagon probably nicknamed the FAE "the poor man's atom bomb" in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public. Such rhetoric is confusing. By comparison with the FAE, a low-yield tactical nuclear shell fired from a 155 mm howitzer is a little more than a damp squib.
The main oil field in the north of Kuwait is Rumaila, a huge underground reservoir that crosses the border with Iraq. Until US air power destroyed its surface facilities, Rumaila was the primary Iraqi oil producing field.
Unlike the low pressure field around the Burgan Complex, which environmental groups such as Greenpeace were allowed to visit on carefully escorted "tourist trips", access to Rumaila has been denied to all. The reason was that while Burgan was blowing at an impressive 600 psi, Rumaila left it for dead with oil and gas pressure more than 10 times higher, at up to 11,000 psi. Had Greenpeace been allowed to view the area, it might have felt compelled to make very strong comments about the devastation.
It is within this top security area that the oil lakes have formed, partly because of the awesome pressure — and thus oil and gas outputs — feeding them continually with more volume.
Beyond any doubt, Rumaila is a potential giant FAE with powers that disturb many physicists. Bearing in mind that the big US FAE contains a mere 15,000 pounds of liquid gas, it is impossible to estimate the overall explosive potential of the gas cloud covering a huge 230 million barrel oil lake during peak summer temperatures.
I spoke to several physicists who initially plugged approximate figures into their computers, went a sick shade of grey and then tried again. None were prepared to be quoted by name, and the only comment I can repeat was from one physicist who, turning from his computer screen wide eyed, drew in a long deep breath.
"Shit!", was all he said.
Off the record estimates of possible blast damage ranged from massive local devastation to an explosion of such force that the bang would be heard, and possibly felt, from Tel Aviv to Karachi. Whichever it might be, this is not time for the Bush Administration to be fooling around in the area, with young navy "Top Gun" pilots toting vast quantities of "hot" munitions around on their multiple wing pylons.
[From the US Blazing Tattles.]