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There was concern immediately prior to the war about the effect of the war on the global economy via damage to Iraqi oil fields. Per a March 16 column by James Flanigan:
...war in the Middle East could exact a heavy toll [on the world’s economy] on the petroleum front—and not just for the duration of the conflict. Many wells could be destroyed in Iraq, either by a U.S.-led bombing campaign or intentionally by Saddam Hussein’s retreating forces, and they aren’t going to return to production anytime soon.
Comparison was made to Iraq’s destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields during Desert Storm. Per the U.S. Department of State:
Iraq released over 5 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf in 1991 and set over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire as Iraqi troops retreated, according to the U.S. Defense Department. The Defense Department estimates that Iraqi destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War had an environmental impact 20 times larger than that caused by the oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaskan waters in 1989.Prior to the start of the current conflict, the Defense Department estimated that any effort by Saddam Hussein’s regime to again destroy Iraq’s oil fields would “have the potential to double the disastrous effects experienced in Kuwait in 1991.”
Adlai Amor of the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and policy organization in Washington, concurred. As Amor explained to the Voice of America, “Iraq has 2,000-plus oil wells. And so the potential is much greater.”
However, it appears that the damage done to date to Iraqi oil wells is not as great as that done to those in Kuwait. First, relatively few wells have been damaged.
Per the LA TIMES:
Before the war, military and industry experts worried that retreating Iraqi soldiers would blacken the horizon by torching hundreds of wells in the Rumaila field of southern Iraq, as they did to Kuwaiti oil fields during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.Instead, only nine wells and pipelines in the vast oil and gas reserve were set ablaze before U.S. and British troops arrived.
Second, the damage done to those wells was less severe. From the same article:
“I really think that the oil workers of Iraq did not want to blow up their own wells,” he said. “Their bosses might have wanted that, but they didn’t. No good oilman wants to see his wells damaged.
And, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
...with a steady supply of water brought in by tankers from Kuwait, and with the area declared safe from attack, crews said they could have the blazes extinguished in as little as 10 days.That’s different from the 1991 Gulf War, when retreating Iraqi forces set ablaze more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait, causing $50 billion in damage. The repairs took two years.
[.....]
“They light ‘em, we fight ‘em. There’s nothing they can do that we can’t control,” said [oil-well repair subcontractor Brian] Krause, who wore a bright red jumpsuit and a baseball cap.
How important is this oil to the future of Iraq? From the U.S. Department of State:
The Defense Department estimates that the potential oil income to the Iraqi people is $20 billion to $30 billion a year, and that these resources will play an important role in shaping Iraq’s economic outlook.
