Kuwait to Hire More Firms to Fight Oil Fires

Impatient at progress in extinguishing hundreds of raging oil well fires, Kuwait’s oil minister said Saturday that he will break the North American monopoly on fighting the blazes and bring in new companies from around the world, a process he predicted would have the fires out within seven months.

Kuwait, which had assigned exclusive contracts to four U.S. and Canadian firms, is holding discussions with Iran, China and other companies in the United States and at least three European countries to move in and join the attack. Kuwaiti officials say that opening the field to other contractors could save this country more than $30 billion by getting the job done more quickly.

“I am very much concerned about the pace that’s going on. It’s relatively slow,” said Kuwaiti Oil Minister Rashid Amiri. “The (North) American companies are the experts in the world. There is no doubt about it. But they have never faced a crisis of this magnitude. They are expert at putting out three fires, four fires at one time, but they are not expert at putting out 500 fires or dealing with a crisis of this magnitude.”

U.S. representatives were clearly annoyed by the move, which was not previously disclosed to either the local managers of the firefighting companies or American government officials before Amiri announced it at a news conference. Privately, they said the Kuwaiti government’s delay in signing supply contracts is responsible for most of the delays in fighting the fires. They predicted that new companies with less experience battling oil well blazes would not be able to significantly shorten the time needed to extinguish the fires.

“The situation is: Do you want to hire a brand-new nobody to work on your million-dollar oil well? Are you going to hire somebody with a track record or just somebody who’s got a sign that says they can do it?” said Ray Henry, senior vice president of Red Adair Inc. of Houston.

“I never heard of a Chinese or an Iranian firefighting team,” he added.

Besides the Red Adair firm, three other North American firms have firefighting contracts with Kuwait: Boots & Coots Inc. of Houston; Wild Well Control Co. of Spring, Tex., and Safety Boss of Calgary, Canada.

Kuwaiti officials have expressed increasing irritation in the past weeks about the slow start in extinguishing the blazes, suggesting that they should have put bonus clauses in contracts with the American companies, which are being paid on a daily rate, providing rewards for finishing the jobs sooner.

The Kuwaitis were far from apologetic about not having disclosed in advance that they were opening the field to other contractors. “It will be a surprise, yes,” Amiri admitted. “It will make them work faster!”

When they pulled out of Kuwait, Iraqi forces left more than 500 oil wells ablaze and an additional 80 wells gushing oil into the sand. So far, North American firefighters have extinguished two blazes and capped 23 gushing wells.

Progress would have been faster, they say, except for delays in clearing mines from the oil fields and getting heavy equipment as well as food and housing for workers into the badly damaged emirate. Companies will soon be equipped to cap up to 20 wells a week, they said.

The U.S. firefighters have said they expect to be able to extinguish a large number of fires within the next three to six months, while some of the more difficult blazes, they say, could take a year.

But Amiri said he believes that the total time for fighting the fires can be reduced from two years to seven months by opening the field to other companies around the world. Based on estimated losses of $43 billion if the burning wells continue consuming oil reserves at their current rate--about 5 million to 6 million barrels a day, worth about $120 million--fighting the fires faster means reducing losses to about $12.5 billion, Amiri said.

The Kuwaiti government also plans to bring in additional companies to handle support services for the firefighting effort, again challenging an American monopoly.

“We have found out there are many other teams and countries that have the know-how and the knowledge to take certain wells and fields and launch a program on those wells,” Amiri said. “Previously, when faced with one or two incidents a year, these companies had difficulty in competing with the four main (North American) companies. But when you have a crisis of this magnitude, that we have today, there is plenty of room for these companies . . . to join in and help in solving the crisis.”

Indeed, the U.S. Department of Energy has encouraged development of innovative firefighting techniques, and Kuwait Oil Co. officials have traveled to the United States to listen to a wide variety of experimental ideas, ranging from huge concrete caps to be dropped atop jetting flames to robots that launch fire-consuming chemicals.

The oil minister said Kuwait is negotiating with companies and government groups from Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran, the United States and elsewhere and is close to offering letters of intent, although no additional contracts have been signed.

The new strategy may also involve giving the North American companies a deadline for completing a certain number of wells and offering the work to other companies if they fail to meet it, Amiri said.

However, Western diplomats here predicted that other companies would not likely be able to significantly shorten the period of time needed to cap the blazes.

The Kuwaitis, said one, “have already contracted with those companies that have the expertise to do it, and they’re not going to be able to really find that much more in the way of expertise. . . .”

“People don’t know what they’re talking about,” complained Henry of Red Adair. “You can gather up a lot of office workers and go fight a forest fire, but they (forest fires) don’t blow back at you, you know?”