RIASSUNTO
Abstract
Although the last oil well fire was announced dead officially on 6th November 1992, the oil wells were far away from being ready to be put back on stream for oil production which is the main source of income for a war- torn country. This paper presents more accurate statistics of the Fire Fighting Stage and discusses in detail the efforts, techniques, equipment, procedures and steps taken to restore the production from the explosions and fire damaged wells. Figure 1 shows a pie chart for the condition of the wells controlled by the major fire fighting teams, while figure 2 shows the pie charts for the methods used by these teams in controlling the oil wells. The operations executed under the Post Capping Operations, although does not seem as dangerous as the initial Capping of the wells, it is equally as hard and demanding as the initial Capping Operation. It is almost equivalent to capping the gushing wells. It was not important as to how you cap the well during the fire stage. However, during post capping operations you have to stick to the laid out procedure using the required available equipment to achieve a set goal of having the wells ready to be taken for the rig workover. To achieve this ultimate goal of installing a new wellhead and X-mas tree instead of the Damaged remains of the wellhead, the following steps were developed in what is known as the Post Capping Operation :-
1. Cutting off the damaged wellhead and securing the well with full bore ball valves.
2. Fishing the tubing string to allow for working space.
3. Securing the well with inflatable packers.
4. Installing a new wellhead.
The above work is not as simple as it may seem, as most of the wells were full of bad surprises.
Introduction
Immediately after the Iraqi forces fastened its grip on Kuwait, a pre- planned scheme of planting explosives charges in most of the key installations was implemented. More than 1000 producing oil wells located in the different oil fields were not an exception (figure 3). In the beginning it seemed as a precautionary step taken by the Iraqi's to deter any military attempts to free Kuwait, or to give them a better negotiation grounds. But at the end it was clear that the main intention of this move was the Iraqi's thirst for sabotage, which resulted in the worlds largest Oil Industry Catastrophe, the burning of 604 oil wells in the State of Kuwait. Table 1 gives the distribution of the sabotaged wells.
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