|
Saudi Arabia
The Environment and the 1991 Persian Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War of 1991 brought serious environmental damage
to the region. The world's largest oil spill, estimated at as
much as 8 million barrels, fouled gulf waters and the coastal
areas of Kuwait, Iran, and much of Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf
shoreline. In some of the sections of the Saudi coast that sustained
the worst damage, sediments were found to contain 7 percent oil.
The shallow areas affected normally provide feeding grounds for
birds, and feeding and nursery areas for fish and shrimp. Because
the plants and animals of the seafloor are the basis of the food
chain, damage to the shoreline has consequences for the whole
shallow-water ecosystem, including the multimillion-dollar Saudi
fisheries industry.
The spill had a severe impact on the coastal area surrounding
Madinat al Jubayl as Sinaiyah, the major industrial and population
center newly planned and built by the Saudi government. The spill
threatened industrial facilities in Al Jubayl because of the seawater
cooling system for primary industries and threatened the supply
of potable water produced by seawater-fed desalination plants.
The Al Jubayl community harbor and Abu Ali Island, which juts
into the gulf immediately north of Al Jubayl, experienced the
greatest pollution, with the main effect of the spill concentrated
in mangrove areas and shrimp grounds. Large numbers of marine
birds, such as cormorants, grebes, and auks, were killed when
their plumage was coated with oil. In addition, beaches along
the entire Al Jubayl coastline were covered with oil and tar balls.
The exploding and burning of approximately 700 oil wells in Kuwait
also created staggering levels of atmospheric pollution, spewed
oily soot into the surrounding areas, and produced lakes of oil
in the Kuwaiti desert equal in volume to twenty times the amount
of oil that poured into the gulf, or about 150 million barrels.
The soot from the Kuwaiti fires was found in the snows of the
Himalayas and in rainfall over the southern members of the Community
of Independent States, Iran (former Soviet Union), Oman, and Turkey.
Residents of Riyadh reported that cars and outdoor furniture were
covered daily with a coating of oily soot. The ultimate effects
of the airborne pollution from the burning wells have yet to be
determined, but samples of soil and vegetation in Ras al Khafji
in northern Saudi Arabia revealed high levels of particles of
oily soot incorporated into the desert ecology. The UN Environmental
Programme warned that eating livestock that grazed within an area
of 7,000 square kilometers of the fires, or 1,100 kilometers from
the center of the fires, an area that included northern Saudi
Arabia, posed a danger to human health. The overall effects of
the oil spill and the oil fires on marine life, human health,
water quality, and vegetation remained to be determined as of
1992. Moreover, to these two major sources of environmental damage
must be added large quantities of refuse, toxic materials, and
between 173 million and 207 million liters of untreated sewage
in sand pits left behind by coalition forces.
Data as of December 1992
|
