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I didn't realize that about the original predictions for the Kuwaiti oil well fires, that's interesting. They are still cleaning up the oil from the sands on t
by kissickas 7y ago
I didn't realize that about the original predictions for the Kuwaiti oil well fires, that's interesting.
They are still cleaning up the oil from the sands on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia 30 years later though.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIt was predicted that the fires would burn from two to five years before losing pressure and going out on their own, optimists estimating two years and pessimists estimating five while the majority estimated three years until this occurred. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires
- ArnoVW 7y agoYou seem definitely better informed on the subject than I am (and on other subjects btw!) But I can't help but point out that the wiki quote talks about the time needed for the fires to go out by themselves, and the 6 months were for them to be extinguished. Still something to be celebrating I suppose, but less of an inconsistency.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoPresumably, I'm older than you. I was actually watching this on the news at the time it was happening. At that time, it was not framed as "if nothing is done and we stand idly by and watch it burn." It was framed as "We simply don't have the manpower to resolve this and it's likely that many of these hundreds of oil well fires will end up simply burning themselves out while we try to get to them because the scale of this is just beyond what we have capacity to try to fix." Then crack teams from around the world converged on Kuwait and developed new techniques on the spot that were more efficient and effective.