Word: spills
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What is certain is that the oil spill has delivered a devastating blow to the ecology of the Persian Gulf. "Massive oil spills could turn this body of water into a virtual dead sea," says Brent Blackwelder, vice president of Friends of the Earth. Hundreds of oil-soaked marine birds are already washing up on the shores of northern Saudi Arabia...
...GULF. Because it is virtually an enclosed basin, with an outlet to the sea only 35 miles wide at the Strait of Hormuz, the gulf is especially vulnerable to oil spills. In a body of water badly contaminated by tankers, garbage and sewage, a disastrous spill of the kind that Iraq caused last week could destroy nesting areas for endangered sea turtles and spawning grounds for shrimp while poisoning tuna, snapper, sardines and anchovies, which are vital to local fishermen. "The ecosystems are endangered anyway," says Frank Barnaby, former director of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute. "Another million barrels...
...time, the Sea Island terminal spill could be compounded by a flood of oil from a major refinery, either as the result of a U.S. attack or a decision by Iraq to open the faucets. A single refinery tank can hold millions of gallons -- enough to smear large stretches of the sebkha, the flat coastal terrain where Kuwaiti refineries are located...
...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...