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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
The Persian Gulf War of 1991 brought serious environmental
damage to the region. The world's largest oil spill, estimated at
as much as 8 million barrels, fouled gulf waters and the coastal
areas of Kuwait, Iran, and much of Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf
shoreline. In some of the sections of the Saudi coast that
sustained the worst damage, sediments were found to contain 7
percent oil. The shallow areas affected normally provide feeding
grounds for birds, and feeding and nursery areas for fish and
shrimp. Because the plants and animals of the seafloor are the
basis of the food chain, damage to the shoreline has consequences
for the whole shallow-water ecosystem, including the
multimillion-dollar Saudi fisheries industry.
The spill had a severe impact on the coastal area surrounding
Madinat al Jubayl as Sinaiyah, the major industrial and
population center newly planned and built by the Saudi
government. The spill threatened industrial facilities in Al
Jubayl because of the seawater cooling system for primary
industries and threatened the supply of potable water produced by
seawater-fed desalination plants. The Al Jubayl community harbor
and Abu Ali Island, which juts into the gulf immediately north of
Al Jubayl, experienced the greatest pollution, with the main
effect of the spill concentrated in mangrove areas and shrimp
grounds. Large numbers of marine birds, such as cormorants,
grebes, and auks, were killed when their plumage was coated with
oil. In addition, beaches along the entire Al Jubayl coastline
were covered with oil and tar balls.
The exploding and burning of approximately 700 oil wells in
Kuwait also created staggering levels of atmospheric pollution,
spewed oily soot into the surrounding areas, and produced lakes
of oil in the Kuwaiti desert equal in volume to twenty times the
amount of oil that poured into the gulf, or about 150 million
barrels. The soot from the Kuwaiti fires was found in the snows
of the Himalayas and in rainfall over the southern members of the
Community of Independent States, Iran (former Soviet Union),
Oman, and Turkey. Residents of Riyadh reported that cars and
outdoor furniture were covered daily with a coating of oily soot.
The ultimate effects of the airborne pollution from the burning
wells have yet to be determined, but samples of soil and
vegetation in Ras al Khafji in northern Saudi Arabia revealed
high levels of particles of oily soot incorporated into the
desert ecology. The UN Environmental Programme warned that eating
livestock that grazed within an area of 7,000 square kilometers
of the fires, or 1,100 kilometers from the center of the fires,
an area that included northern Saudi Arabia, posed a danger to
human health. The overall effects of the oil spill and the oil
fires on marine life, human health, water quality, and vegetation
remained to be determined as of 1992. Moreover, to these two
major sources of environmental damage must be added large
quantities of refuse, toxic materials, and between 173 million
and 207 million liters of untreated sewage in sand pits left
behind by coalition forces.
Data as of December 1992
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