Oil Wells in Kwait
The dark portion in the center of the image is the great Burgan oil field, which is the world's second biggest after the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia. The name, the great Burgan oil field, is a general name for the three fields of Magwa, Ahmadi and Burgan starting from the north. Along the coastline, in a long and narrow width, one can see a town and roads where big and small oil shipping ports are located. These ports handle the world's biggest oil tankers, with oil refinery facilities for exporting crude and refined oil at Ahmadi Port.
This oil field was reduced to flames when the Persian war broke out in February, 1991. All together more than 700 wells were turned into fire balls, the tops of which reached 5,000m up into the atmosphere causeing black rain to fall all over this region.
The result would have been much more catastrophically extensive, if they had reached 10,000m high and entered the jet stream. The signs of the fire are still vivid in this image taken in August, 1994 when the fires had been extinguished for three years.
Kuwait is a small country so as to be called a city state of the desert. It has, however, an enormous amount of oil under the ground, which ranks in the world as No.1 or 2. The population is not big (about 2.1 million) and has huge resources which makes it very rich in oil dollars. Because of this reason, more than half of the inhabitants are seasonal foreign workers.
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