The role of the strategic firefighting emergency plan in reducing the environmental consequences of Kuwait's 1991 oil catastrophe

On 21 February 1991, Kuwait faced a very difficult situation, never experienced in the history of mankind, in which more than 600 wells were set ablaze simultaneously in different oilfields. As a result, there were many environmental concerns and economic fears which had to be faced and given priority before extinguishing and capping the wells. Such concerns and fears, in addition to the underestimation of the catastrophe level, prompted the Kuwaiti Government to announce a strategic firefighting emergency plan (SFEP), in order to address this disaster, which appeared certain to cause serious environmental deterioration. The main themes of the SFEP and the logistic and the environmental challenges involved in its implementation, in addition to how they were tackled, are described in this paper. The evaluation of the SFEP themes shows that it was realized with notably high success, which is mainly attributable to the extraordinary response of the global community to address such a catastrophe, the development of innovative firefighting techniques, the increase in numbers of the firefighting teams, the birth of a new firefighting team, in addition to the stipulation of logistic services which acted as a backbone to the success of the SFEP. If the new techniques and the growth of the firefighting teams had been implemented at an earlier stage, and the political issues involved in signing the firefighting contracts had been ignored, it could be argued that the SFEP would have been able to reduce the firefighting period to considerably less than 8 months, with the result that economic losses could have been reduced, further oil reserves might have been conserved, and the adverse environmental impacts could have been more fully mitigated. It is hoped that the themes of Kuwait's SFEP can provide the realities of planning to deal with similar environmental disasters, and contribute to both developing strategic and emergency plans that minimize environmental and socio-economic impacts resulting from oil blowouts. In addition, studying the SFEP might improve our appreciation of the need to establish relevant policy and sound management systems for sustainable development in relation to oilfields.