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Kuwait to implement three land remediation projects
KuWAIt
KUWAIT Oil Co. (KOC) announced plans this week to carry out three remediation projects to clean a total of 17mn cubic metres of sand con- taminated during the 1990-91 invasion by Iraq.
e largest of the projects will treat 9mn cubic metres in southern Kuwait, while the second will clean 4mn cubic metres in the Al-rawdatain, Al-Sabriya, and Umm Al-Aish and the third will treat another 4mn cubic metres, with no details provided about the location, according to reports by the local Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).
Speaking on side-lines of a forum on reme- diation, KOC CEO Imad Al-Sultan said that the projects had been passed to the Central Agency for Public Tenders for approval.
KOC’s leader for sand remediation, Muthanna Al-Mumen was quoted by KUNA as saying that KOC had requested $3bn from the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC) for the remediation work, but added that, “only 8% of the restoration projects have been achieved.”
Al-Mumen added that KOC had completed four projects so far, each costing $10m, remov- ing 2.28m cubic metres of contaminated soil and substances. e country has an ambitious target of completing the remediation works by 2024.
Kuwait has deliberated for many years over various means of varying environmental sus- tainability for cleaning-up the severe contami- nation, spread across large areas of territory. e process has been further slowed by the state’s typically rigid decision-making processes.
KOC, the domestic upstream operating sub- sidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC), is handling the remediation work at its North and South East Kuwait operational zones on behalf of the so-called Kuwait National Focal Point.
This government body was established under UN requirements to oversee the funding and implementation of the overarching Kuwait Environmental remediation Programme deal- ing with the war damages.
According to the assessment accepted by the UNCC, more than 700 oil wells were set alight by the Iraqi army, with North Kuwait inevitably su ering the worst of the fallout.
is resulted in damages including the dep- osition of around 270 square km of the so-called “tarcrete” mix of sand, gravel, oil and soot, and oil lakes spread over 114 square km requiring the ultimate excavation of 26m cubic metres of contaminated soil.
e Total remediation Strategy now drawn up and outlined in the tender documents describes the ve main strategies for dealing with the waste, depending on levels of contamination.
Soil with total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) content of 1-3% is regarded as no longer requiring action. Bioremediation technology is to be applied to soils with 2-7% TPH, while alternative technologies are to be deployed on soil with 7-10% contamination.
Material with more than 10% TPH is to be recycled or reused where possible; and the most-polluted soil unsuitable for either cleaning or recycling is to be sent to land ll.
The UNCC awarded claims against Iraq worth a total of $47.8bn for damages done dur- ing the war, the bulk of, which were adjudged due to Kuwaiti institutions and individuals, to be paid through an obligation for Iraq to deposit 5% of oil export revenues with the commission.
Payment of the nal $4.6bn outstanding was deferred in late 2014, as a combination of the oil price slump and the invasion by Islamic State (IS) militants induced scal crisis in Baghdad.
However, payments resumed in mid-2018, following the defeat of IS in December 2017. It was agreed that the $90mn quarterly payments were to increase from 0.5% of Iraqi oil proceeds in 2018 to 1.5% in 2019 and 3% in 2020 and 2021, at the end of which the reparations are supposed to be cleared. ™
Week 27 09•July•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7