Chapter 12: Riches in Rock: Energy and Mineral Resources
Feature Articles
Oil-Well Fires
by Stephen Marshak
Oil well fires in Kuwait
Credit: US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine
To many people, a discussion of oil drilling immediately brings to mind the image of a gusher fountaining oil into the sky while gleeful drillers dance about in the black, greasy rain. In reality, drillers dread gushers, not only because they waste oil, but also because fires may ignite when the oil comes in contact with sparks generated by the drilling equipment. This is big trouble—how do you put out a fire fueled by a natural underground reservoir of flammable liquid? It ain't easy! Extinguishing oil-well fires requires highly specialized equipment and know-how. In fact, there are only a few companies on the planet with the skill to do it. One of these was operated by the legendary "Red" Adair, whose daring in putting out well fires was memorialized by John Wayne in the movie Hellfighters. After the Gulf War, firefighters needed to extinguish over 600 oil-well fires in Kuwait.
Water can't be used to put out an oil-well blaze, because oil floats on top of water—water will just spread the fire—and the force of the fire generally makes foam ineffective as well. Rather, firefighters first use bulldozers to drag the red-hot remnants of the metal drilling equipment away from the fire so that the blaze won't be reignited after it's extinguished. Then they surround the fire with dynamite and literally blow it out. The explosion robs the fire of oxygen. With the fire out, they rush in and cap the well head to staunch further flow.
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