Gulf War Oil Spill

"Cleaning up such a large spill would be difficult, even in the best of times. But this is a spill in the middle of a war zone. Nobody's going to be able to clean it up." —John Teal, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Retreating Iraqi forces in Kuwait dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the Persian gulf by deliberately opening valves of the Sea Island pipeline and several offshore oil tankers. 650 oil wells in Kuwait were also set on fire, releasing millions more barrels of oil as pollution in the desert before they could be sealed again nine months later. Over 400 miles of coastline were smothered in oil, destroying plant and animal life, while patchwork remediation efforts focused primarily on oil recovery. Ten years later, studies of coastal salt marshes in Kuwait still showed that only 20% of these delicate habitats have fully recovered.