Experts Not Prepared to Cope With Spill : Cleanup: Authorities scramble for solutions but concede that it may be too late to save wildlife.

Nearly two years after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, the world is confronted with an oil spill many times more devastating in the Persian Gulf--and is ill prepared to deal with it.

The White House on Saturday dispatched a multi-agency team of experts to the disaster scene to assess what could be done, if anything, to contain up to 6 million barrels of crude driven by the tide of war.

But even before they arrived, oil-spill authorities were virtually writing off hundreds of shore birds, sea turtles, crabs and other creatures as casualties of what the White House called “environmental terrorism.”

“I think it’s gone beyond any reasonable expectation of containing it. It’s too big,” John D. Costello, a retired Coast Guard admiral, told The Times in a telephone interview Saturday. Costello heads the Marine Spill Response Organization, the oil industry cooperative formed in the wake of the Valdez spill.

Costello said it is doubtful that the advancing black tide could be checked even if caches of booms and dispersants could be rushed to the scene.

“I don’t know if there’s enough dispersants in the entire world to use on that slick,” Costello said.

In Saudi Arabia, Peter Whitbread, head of the Dubai salvage firm International Marine Services, said: “It’s too late now. There’s not enough containment equipment on the planet to deal with a megaspill of this magnitude.”

Many experts are more optimistic about protecting the desalination plants--a vital lifeline for more than half of the potable water in the arid region.

Already, the Persian Gulf spill--fed at the dizzying rate of an estimated 100,000 barrels a day--is 30 miles long and eight miles wide. It is more than 20 times larger than the 262,000 barrels that bled from the Exxon Valdez when the tanker ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in March, 1989.

The oil was gushing into the northern gulf from a terminal about 10 miles east of Al Ahmadi, Kuwait’s main loading terminal. The U.S. blamed the disaster on Iraqi sabotage. Additional oil was believed to be spilling from tankers in Iraqi hands.

Even under optimal circumstances, oil-spill cleanup and containment are difficult. In Alaska, no more than 8% of the crude that spilled into Prince William Sound was recovered, according to the congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

Much of the oil evaporated. And despite the $2.3 billion Exxon spent in its cleanup efforts, it was winter storms that scoured much of the 2,000 miles of oil-stained rocky shoreline. Alaska officials said the spill killed 100,000 to 300,000 sea birds, thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of bald eagles.

Floating booms to contain the oil or divert the leading edge of the spill are effective only if seas are no higher than two to six feet, depending on the type of boom.

Experts in Saudi Arabia said brisk winds and waves of six to nine feet are expected in the coming days.

Already it may be too late to use chemical dispersants to break up the oil in the Persian Gulf.

Despite reports of fire on the water Saturday, the Persian Gulf is not likely to turn into a caldron. Some have suggested burning the oil before it can reach shore.

But oil-spill authorities said it is difficult to ignite crude oil on the ocean. A study by the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 found that the ocean’s relatively low temperature works against a fire.

“It is difficult to raise the temperature of a thin layer of floating oil high enough to permit ignition,” the academy study said. A Pentagon official said Saturday that a fire of unknown origin in the slick appeared to be dying out.

Reports from the gulf said blobs of tar had been spotted on some beaches. There were other reports that much of the slick had been whipped into a thick froth, known as mousse. When this occurs, the oil can neither be ignited nor dispersed with chemicals.

As for the desalination plants, the Saudis have been bracing for this kind of battle since 1983, when their plants were threatened by an oil slick during the Iraq-Iran War.

By Saturday, the northernmost Saudi desalination plant, at Khafji, had been closed down, said Eric Brus, executive editor of the Oil Pollution Bulletin.

H. Matary, an environmentalist with the Saudi Meteorological and Environmental Protection Agency, said wind and currents were taking the slick south at a pace that would allow it to reach the much larger Jubayl desalination system in about two days.

Jubayl’s two plants supply 90% of the potable water for Riyadh, the capital.

The Jubayl facilities and another jumbo plant farther south, at Khobar, are built on the shoreline. The cleanup effort will center on protecting the seawater intakes--most of which are within a few hundred yards of the shore--from the oil.

At Jubayl, the four main intakes are right on the water’s edge. Two breakwaters with a relatively narrow opening lie in front of the plants, which make up the world’s largest desalination facility. Most experts expect the Saudis to boom off the entrance to deflect the oil.

“It would have to be arrays of booms within booms,” said James D. Birkett, of Nobleboro, Maine-based West Neck Strategies, who has worked on Mideast desalination facilities for more than 20 years. “Then they would use oil-skimming boats to deal with the oil that gets through the booms.”

“We know a hell of a lot more about booming off oil slicks since the Valdez spill,” Birkett said. He believes that the desalination facilities will not be seriously hurt.

“They might have to take individual units out of service for cleaning,” Birkett said. “It might cut into production. But these guys are pretty resourceful. They’ll find some way to keep water coming out of the end of the pipe.”

But Patricia Burke, secretary general of the International Desalination Assn., believes that the Saudis would more likely shut down the plants if oil nears the intakes.

Birkett said that mothballed facilities near Riyadh could be brought into service to produce supplies from brackish water.

But successfully defending the desalination plants appeared to be the only bright hope.

“What you see is a picture of a great disaster,” said Abdul-Rahman Awadi, a Kuwaiti cabinet minister who heads the Regional Organization for the Protection of Maritime Environment.

Awadi noted that the gulf is nearly an enclosed sea, largely cut off from cleansing outside currents.

“We think this oil is going to rest (here) quite a long time,” he said.

CLEANING UP

War and geography may work against efforts to clean up the millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Persian Gulf, experts say. Conventional cleanup methods could be difficult in a war zone, and the gulf is almost an enclosed body of water, preventing oil from easily washing out to open sea. Some of the possible methods: * Deal with the spill at the source: Difficult in a war zone in which the enemy is believed to have released the oil.

* Oil booms and skimmers: Booms, used to seal off spills, would not stop the spill if it is as big as feared, experts say. But booms can skim oil from the surface. Booms could also protect the seawater intakes for desalination plants.

* Burn the oil: Crude oil--unlike refined products such as gasoline--does not burn easily on water because its more volatile components evaporate quickly and the water makes it difficult to raise the temperature of oil to permit ignition. Most also think it unlikely that the oil would still be burning by the time the slick reaches refineries, desalination plants and other facilities on Saudi shores.

* Cover it with chemical dispersants: Dispersants do not work well in thick oil, or in calm seas. Moreover, it is difficult to make repeated flybys with dispersants in a war zone. Iraqi-laid mines in the region could also stop commercial ships from trying to collect the crude.

* Use napalm to set the oil on fire: If napalm could be applied, it could set the crude on fire. How to apply it is the question; the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Minerals Management Service have been experimenting with “igniters,” but research is still under way.

Source: Los Angeles Times, Associated Press

THE OIL SPILL A look at Kuwait’s Sea Island Terminal--located 10 miles offshore--which has been pinpointed by allied officials as a major source of the huge oil spill in the Persian Gulf. * Oil comes from Kuwait’s main refinery and loading complex at Al Ahmadi, just south of Kuwait city.

* Sea Island can pump out 100,000 barrels per hour or 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day.

* It is not clear how much the Iraqis, who apparently just turned on the pumps, are letting flow into the water.

* It is not known how full the Sea Island storage tanks had been or whether Iraq has the expertise to keep filling the tanks and then pumping out oil into the sea at a high rate.

* Kuwait’s production quota, imposed by OPEC before it was invaded on Aug. 2, was 1.5 million barrels a day.

(Southland Edition) WORST SHIPPING SPILLS

A partial list of record oil spills from ships. In shipping, oil normally is measured by ton. The number of tons can be multiplied by 7 to estimate the number of barrels spilled; each barrel contains 42 gallons.

By comparison, the worst oil spill in U.S. history--the 1989 spill from the Exxon Valdez off Alaska--was 11 million gallons. That translates as roughly 35,000 to 40,000 tons.

* July 19, 1979: Collision of two ships off Trinidad and Tobago, Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain. 300,000 tons spilled.

* Aug. 6, 1983: Fire aboard Castillo de Bellver, off Cape Town, South Africa. 250,000 tons spilled.

* March 16, 1978: Tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground off coast of France. 223,000 tons spilled.

* March 18, 1967: Torrey Canyon grounded off coast of England. 119,000 tons spilled.

* Dec. 19, 1972: Sea Star involved in collision in Gulf of Oman. 115,000 tons spilled.

* May 12, 1976: Urquiola runs aground near La Coruna, Spain. 100,000 tons spilled.

* Feb. 25, 1977: Fire aboard Hawaiian Patriot in northern Pacific Ocean. 90,000 tons spilled.

Source: Associated Press