U.S. Army engineers restoring Iraq's oil industry are introducing American environmental protection notions to an industry historically unconcerned about such issues, while simultaneously hoping to pioneer bioremediation tools that may be useful back home.

The team's mission is to clean up damage caused by coalition military action, not redress past industry practices, says Dawn Knight, a Corps of Engineers environmental engineer. Iraqi oil workers for years have poured waste oil onto the desert floor, creating large oil lakes in a fashion banned in the U.S. for decades, says Knight.

OIL LAKE NORTH Spill in North Rumaila oil field contained 15,000 bbl when discovered. (Photo courtesy of USACE)

The Restore Iraqi Oil task force is tapping both U.S. military and academic expertise. Iraq has no environmental ministry so the group is drawing on regulations of various states to develop standards.

Knight is informally teamed with an active duty reservist and academic, Lt. Col. Jeffrey W. Talley, chief of operations for the 416th Engineer Command in Kuwait, which is responsible for non-combat-support engineering in the theater of operations. Talley, former director of the Corps' Vicksburg environmental research center, is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Ind. (ENR 5/27/96 p. 39). His specialty is treatment of contaminated groundwater, soils and sediments.

The team contains damage, recovers free product where possible and then determines which sites require U.S. remediation. Options include thermal desorption, land farming, landfilling and soil washing.

Talley on job. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey W. Talley)

Some approaches are costly. Thermal desorption, for instance, requires heating contaminated soil in an oven to separate the liquids. The team prefers land farming, which involves mixing nutrients into the soil, tilling and promoting bacteria to gradually clean up petroleum hydrocarbons. Since the affected areas are far from human habitation, the relatively slow approach is more acceptable in Iraq than it might be in the U.S., Knight notes.

The team is concentrating on two major oil lakes, one each in the North Rumaila and South Rumaila oilfields, and 24 smaller spills. So-called Oil Lake South, the largest, held about 15,000 bbl when it was discovered. Oil Lake North had 8,000 to 10,000 bbl.

Knight taps U.S. military aid. (Photo by Thomas F. Armistad for ENR)

Talley got involved as a volunteer. The work has no connection with his regular duties, but the Army Reserve encourages its people to use civilian-acquired skills. "I'm doing it as Professor Talley," says Talley, who has pushed for low-cost solutions. Since oil residue in sand biodegrades fairly easily, he asked Notre Dame to perform analysis using his own academic account. Knight called on the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Miss., for additional funds. He express-shipped soil samples to the U.S. in dry ice for analysis in hopes that indigenous oil-eating bacteria will be found.

Talley says it may be possible to stimulate bacteria to clean soil in one or two years at a cost of just 1% of original expectations. The Iraqis could use the technique on their pre-existing oil spills.