Word: slick
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Another full-fledged war began last week, complete with its own heavy weapons, intelligence reports and international team of experts on strategy and tactics. This one was against an enemy no less redoubtable than Saddam's army: an oil slick estimated at 80 km (50 miles) long and 19 km (12 miles) wide that is breaking into pieces as it spreads down the Persian Gulf, its consistency like that of melted chocolate...
Early on, experts might have blunted the slick's destructive power by burning off some of the oil, using chemical dispersants to break it up and removing more with surface-skimming devices deployed from boats. But the best they could hope for in a war zone was to protect a few key spots. "We learned in the Exxon Valdez cleanup that you can't control the oil but you can exclude it from a small area," says Randy Bayliss, a consultant involved in the Alaskan effort...
Workers last week began placing miles of plastic booms around the desalination facilities. Because petroleum generally floats on water, such booms, which extend up to 1 m (3 ft.) below the surface, can contain a slick. The next step is to put skimming equipment inside the booms and begin scooping up the oil, either with vacuuming devices or by drawing oil-absorbent plastic ropes through it and wringing them out. Some of the crude can be salvaged as kerosene...
...environmental terrorism," Saddam had probably unleashed the oil with military purposes in mind. Tar balls could gum up the desalinization plants along the Saudi coast that provide most of the fresh water to the gulf countries as well as to allied troops. As the Saudis scrambled to divert the slick with surface booms, plans were considered to extend intake lines deep into unpolluted waters and provide backup water supplies. President George Bush sent an interagency team to Saudi Arabia to assist the containment effort...
Saddam might also have had in mind setting the oil ablaze to thwart an amphibious Marine landing on the Kuwaiti coast. Because most crude oil burns poorly, that prospect left allied military planners unfazed -- even as they kept a wary eye on a fire that was spotted on the slick during the weekend...