Washington: A fire at one of Iraq’s oilfields could hinder military and humanitarian efforts as operations to recapture the Daesh stronghold of Mosul get under way.
Black smoke continues to billow into the air from the Qayyara oilfield, damaged by Daesh militants last month as they fled the town, creating health risks for civilians and troops amassing there. The fires are also clogging up the skies in the area, where critically important air strikes and aerial reconnaissance missions are taking place almost daily.
Located on the west bank of the Tigris River, about 40 miles (65km) south of Mosul, Qayyara has since become an important staging ground for military and humanitarian efforts ahead of the Mosul operation since it was recaptured by Iraqi forces last month.
“Stabilising Qayyara can’t wait — it has to happen now,” Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told The Associated Press.
“Everything for the Mosul operation hinges on Qayyara,” she said. “It’s the staging ground for military forces and it’s where 350,000 of the one million people who are expected to flee (Mosul) will either find shelter or pass through.”
There are slow-going Iraqi efforts to contain the fires, but nearly a month after the town was recaptured from the militants, smoke and toxic fumes continue to pollute the air in and around Qayyara.
The Iraqi Oil Ministry spokesman, Assem Jihad, said on Wednesday that Daesh militants set fire to 11 oil wells in Qayyara to derail security forces and wreak havoc in the area as they fled. He said fires at nine of the wells have been extinguished, but two continue to burn powerfully.
“It does cause some problems. It certainly doesn’t stop anything,” Col John Dorrian, a spokesman for the US-led military coalition in Baghdad, said. “The Iraqis have asked for coalition help to determine what can be done to put those fires out. We’ll do what we can to support them.”
The images of smoke and flames from the oil wells are reminiscent of the oil fires in Kuwait after the Iraqi military reportedly set fire to hundreds of wells when Saddam Hussain invaded the neighbouring Arabian Gulf nation in the early 1990s.
“In putting out the fires in Kuwait, the firefighters used water pipes and pumped the water from the Arabian Gulf to spray at the base of the fires,” said Kourosh Kian, an expert in petroleum drilling and reservoir engineering.
Kian, a system engineer at GE Aviation, said the simplest method to extinguish these types of fires is to inject water under high pressure at the base of the fire. Since Qayyara is on the Tigris River, there would be no problem with the water supply, he said.
Qayyara and Najmah, the two main fields in the area with reserves slightly over one billion barrels, came under the control of the Daesh when it captured Iraq’s Nineveh province in June 2014.
While Iraqi forces now remain in control of the area, it is far from stable. At the Qayyara West airbase, where hundreds of US troops are working to advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts, a small rocket that contained a mustard agent landed, Gen Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress on Thursday.
A US official, who discussed details of the incident on Wednesday on condition of anonymity, said a small group of US soldiers who inspected remnants of the rocket after it exploded found a black, oily substance on a fragment of metal. An initial test of the suspicious substance showed it contained residue of mustard agent, but a second test was negative.
Militants continue to dwell around the town to the west and along the eastern bank toward the town of Al Alam.
The Iraqi military, backed by coalition air strikes and coalition advise-and-assist operations, looks to recapture more territory from the militant group, which at one point in 2014 controlled about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria. US-led coalition forces have launched more than 460 air strikes around Qayyara since August 2014 and more than 1,800 around the city of Mosul itself.
But for aid workers in the country, the fires are an immediate primary concern as they prepare for a potential mass influx of displaced people as Mosul operations get under way.
“There is also a major effort to stabilise Qayyara,” Grande said. “Hundreds of thousands of people who may flee Mosul are likely to come in this direction.”
