Gulf Oil Disaster Feared : Iraq Creates Huge Slick Off Kuwait

The White House said today that Iraq is dumping millions of barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf from Kuwait in an apparent effort to frustrate a U.S. attack. Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the spill likely will surpass the 1989 Valdez, Alaska, disaster.

“We will plan our military activities around it,” he said.

Some gulf-based oil industry officials raised the possibility that the spill, already serious, could become disastrous if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein set the slick on fire. But experts noted that crude oil--unlike refined products such as gasoline--does not burn easily.

Fitzwater said that oil being emptied from Kuwaiti oil storage tanks threatens massive environmental damage.

“They are dumping huge quantities of oil into the gulf from oil tank farms,” Fitzwater said. “It looks to be continuous. Clearly, it’s in the millions of barrels.”

Fitzwater said the oil has been dumped into the Persian Gulf for several days.

“What we’re talking about here is something that far exceeds any kind of tanker spill that we’ve ever witnessed,” Fitzwater said.

The 1989 Alaska oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez poured 11 million gallons into Prince William Sound.

“Iraqi forces have been deliberately dumping large amounts of crude oil in the Persian Gulf. It is not clear at this time what the eventual aim of Iraq may be. However, this indiscriminate action raises great concerns for the international community,” Fitzwater said.

“The presumption is to inhibit naval activity,” Fitzwater said. “It could have some impact in that area. We don’t know how much.

“The impact will be mostly environmental. That’s our big fear at the moment. The military can plan around it. Unquestionably it will have an environmental impact.”

He said that the Defense and Energy departments were closely monitoring the oil dumping and “examining contingencies for dealing with it” and were in close consultations with other countries in the gulf area.

“We don’t have any plan at this point,” he added.

He said it was not clear whether the huge oil dump could threaten Saudi drinking water supplies by damaging water desalination plants on the gulf, but he said that was possible.

In Riyadh, Lt. Col. Ahmed Roybayan, a Saudi military spokesman, said the spill first was detected three days ago and that an oil slick already had spread almost 10 miles southward toward Saudi waters.

Roybayan said the oil was flowing steadily from pumps at the Sea Island terminal, 10 miles offshore from Kuwait’s main petroleum refinery and loading complex at Al Ahmadi, just south of Kuwait City.

The Iraqis apparently had turned on the pumps and let them run, Roybayan said. The pumps can move at least 100,000 barrels of oil per day, he said, but there was no immediate estimate as to how much actually was flowing into the gulf.

“We think it was done on purpose,” Robayan said.

Marine Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston, the U.S. Central Command’s chief of staff, noted to reporters in Riyadh that the oil spill was in enemy territory, adding, “We can’t just go in and shut it off.”