His face blackened
and helmet coated in soot, Hussein Saleh watched the oil fields of his home
town in northern Iraq burn, belching up thick smoke that blotted out the sun
.
Dozens of fellow
workers and engineers from Iraq's North Oil Company, wearing dirty jackets and
overalls with scarves wrapped around their faces, started up their water tankers
and bulldozers for the day's work.
Their job: to
extinguish and cap another oil well that Islamic State militants set ablaze
when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces drove them out of Qayyara in August.
"I've worked in
oil for 30 years and I've never seen anything like this," 57-year-old
Saleh said, standing close enough to the flames to feel the heat.
"Daesh (Islamic
State) just put explosives on the wellheads and blew them up," he said.
The men work in
large teams to reduce the blaze, contain the fire and then cap the well. Each
fire can take days to put out, Saleh said. Since October they have capped at
least seven or eight wells, with more than a dozen more to go.
But the work has
been dangerous. On top of the fires and the potential for inhaling toxic smoke,
the area is still being cleared of Islamic State booby traps and landmines.
Qayyara's burning
oil fields vividly depict the destruction the group wrought on northern Iraq,
as Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition battle to drive the jihadists
out of their stronghold in nearby Mosul.
Islamic State has
made hundreds of millions of dollars through sale on the black market of oil
from the fields it captured in Iraq and Syria when took over swathes of both
countries in 2014, according to U.S. government estimates.
OIL SMUGGLING
It has suffered a
near collapse in oil smuggling revenue, however, since losing control of a
series of oil fields in 2015 and 2016.
In Qayyara, the job
of cleaning up the mess has just begun, and is slow and challenging.
"We use water,
earth, everything we can to control and reduce the blaze, and it's a big team
-- perhaps 150 people working on one well," supervisor Ahmed Hidayat, 54,
said.
"Earth is
bulldozed over the burning oil surrounding the well so we can get close to it, and
then when we're close enough we cap the well.
"We try to plug
it with a new wellhead instead of cementing it over, because then we'd have to
drill through again."
On Wednesday the men
prepared to cap another well, spraying water onto the fire that turned the
black smoke white.
As they did so, an
explosion rang out close to the well - a controlled detonation by Iraqi sappers
of an Islamic State IED.
"There were
mines laid around the wells," Saleh explained.
"A policeman
was wounded five days ago. He put one foot off the road and stepped on a mine.
It's a bit scary, you don't know where they might be."
Sabah Ali, a worker
from another oil-producing town northwest of Mosul, said he was worried for his
health because of prolonged exposure to the fumes.
"It's hard
work. The fires are massive and you breathe in so much smoke," he said.
"Someone choked on it recently and had to be treated by our medical
team."
But the men, some of
whom haven't worked for two years because they lived in areas under Islamic
State control, say they are happy to be receiving their wages again, plus
danger money of around $50 a day.
Saleh said he also
felt a duty to his town and country.
"People should
work for the good of their country. Daesh has destroyed the country, destroyed
the people, destroyed Islam," he said.
REUTERS
Follow Solenzo Blog on
0 Comments