Word: spill
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...massive oil spill was used as a military weapon...
...estimated 1.1 billion liters (294 million gal.) of crude oil had escaped from Kuwait's Sea Island terminal before allied bombing raids on pumps feeding the facility reduced the torrent to a trickle. That makes the spill by far the largest ever, not 12 times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, as originally thought, but 27 times as large. And that does not include oil that began gushing last week from a second spill farther north. The magnitude of the mess is such that "it can't be cleaned up," says Jim Rhodes, of ABASCO, a maker...
Saddam Hussein may have engineered the spill to foil any allied plans for an amphibious invasion, but he was also probably trying to shut down seaside desalination plants that provide much of the fresh water for Saudi Arabia's Eastern province. Another target may have been Saudi power stations and oil refineries, which rely on seawater for cooling. Saddam's action will not prevent an invasion, says the Pentagon, but temporary shutdowns of plants and refineries seem inevitable...
...week, Baghdad's motives were instantly clear to Saudi Arabia and to the Kuwaiti government-in-exile. In Taif, Saudi Arabia, where the Kuwaiti administration has settled for the time being, experts plotted the prevailing currents in the gulf and concluded that in only a few days the giant spill could reach Jubail, Saudi Arabia. That is where a mammoth desalinization plant provides much of the potable water consumed in the kingdom's eastern province -- a military target if ever there...
...facility. Most of the oil would dissipate anyway, they claimed, and floating booms placed near Jubail could capture the residue before the desalinization plant was seriously threatened. By Saturday morning, the options ranged from an air strike on Al- Ahmadi to a special-operations action designed to stanch the spill, but no decision had been reached...