Texans: Putting out fires and handing out cigarettes in Iraq

[Timber Loftis]

Today's NY Times

Men From Texas, on Call in Kuwait, Cap Well Fires in Southern Iraq
By CHARLIE LeDUFF with ALAN FEUER

UMAILA OIL FIELDS, Iraq, March 29 — A Bedouin herdsman, sagging in his saddle, rode slowly around the camp. The war had put him out, he said, severed him from the villages where he got his provisions before the soldiers arrived. The spewing oil from the sabotaged wells had poisoned his water pools. He was hungry, thirsty, hangdog. His family was living on camel's milk. Could the kind Americans not spare a gallon of water and three Snickers bars?

Rahim, the son of Kamal, was given a gallon of water and a candy bar. But the Americans' job was not to hand out food and water, or even to fight. These were civilians, here to save Iraq's most valuable resource: oil.

The military campaign to save the vast oil fields in southern Iraq, which account for more than half the country's production, has been one of the few unequivocal successes of the war.

The allied forces report that they are in control of the infrastructure of pipelines, pumping stations and 600 wells. Just nine wells were sabotaged and five continue to burn, a far cry from the 741 wells the Iraqis set afire on their retreat from Kuwait in 1991. This has helped keep oil prices under $30 a barrel after rising to a 12-year high of $39.99 in late February.

The job of suppressing the flaming wells belongs to the men of Boots & Coots, a Texas company founded in 1978 by a pair of oilmen named Boots Hansen and Coots Matthews.

Thirteen of the company's technicians have been sent to battle the blazes in Iraq.

Donald S. Hepburn, a retired executive of the Bahrain Petroleum Company, said he has heard that the American plan for postwar redevelopment of the Iraqi oil fields has three stages.

First, he said, the men of Boots & Coots and other oil well fire specialists will extinguish burning wells. Second, American and European oil companies will arrive to tap the light, sweet crude from Iraq's known but undeveloped oil fields.

Finally, he said, the foreigners will work with the Iraq National Oil Company to sink new wells to bring Iraq's production from two million barrels of oil to six million in the next 10 years.

The details and the players may be subject to international negotiation. But the Texans know that the fires will have to be put out first, and they have been waiting in Kuwait for months. "It's a life of living on the edge," said Mike, who insisted that his last name not be published for fear that terrorists might attack his family in Dallas. "The job pays good, but you're doing it because you're cheating death, defeating Mother Nature. It's a hoot."

The men are rugged, and they take pride in standing in an oily inferno, nothing between them and incineration but a bit of sheet metal with wooden handles. But when they see the young soldiers returning from the front in the morning, they are embarrassed that they are staying in a luxury hotel with terry cloth slippers and 400-thread sheets.

The firefighters' job is to set off an explosive charge close enough to a burning well to momentarily starve it of the oxygen it needs for combustion. The oil still spews, but with the ignition turned off the well is approachable and can be capped.

An oil fire burns at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, turning the sand to glass. It blisters, reddens, sears the flesh. Then there is the air in the oil fields. It is brown with sand and oil, clogging the orifices and settling into the lungs.

In the late afternoon after one well had been extinguished, Rahim, the son of Kamal, returned.

It would be counterproductive to kill his animals for meat, he said. How could he? The beasts weigh at least 1,000 pounds and cost $1,000. Better to beg from the Americans with the good hearts. His child is hungry.

"Life will be better with the Americans," he said. "Saddam is a bad man."

For that, he was given some cigarettes.

[pritchke]

"For that, he was given some cigarettes."

There is more than one way to kill.