Abstract

As the climax of the Gulf War approached, Saddam Hussein decided on a desperate and insane move: he had the contents of five Iraqi-flagged oil tankers dumped in the Mina al Ahmadi port in Kuwait. Also, the Iraqis opened the spigots of the oil-loading terminal off the Kuwaiti coast. A new kind of weapon was unleashed on the world: environmental terrorism. The ensuing Gulf oil spill was the largest spill in history, six to eight million barrels (the previous record: 4.2 million barrels dumped after the 1979 blowout of the Ixtoc well). It damaged a precariously fragile ecosystem. The Gulf is shallow and it is nearly enclosed. The average depth is a mere 110 feet. It takes 200 years to flush out and replace the stagnant gulf water.

Keywords

Electric Utility Emission Allowance World Market Price Fragile Ecosystem Environment Protection Agency 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1995

Authors and Affiliations

  • Sten Thore
    • 1
  1. 1.IC2 InstituteThe University of TexasAustinUSA

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