THROWBACKTHISDAY, JAN 23; World's largest oil spill, caused by embattled Iraqi forces in Kuwait

                  

On Thisday January 23 in 1991 is The Gulf War oil spill which was one of the largest oil spills in history, resulting from the Gulf War in 1991.

 The apparent strategic goal was to foil a potential landing by US Marines. It also made commandeering oil reserves very difficult for US forces. The immediate reports from Baghdad said that American air strikes had caused a discharge of oil from two tankers. Coalition forces determined the main source of oil to be the Sea Island terminal in Kuwait. On January 26, three US F-117 fighter-bombers destroyed pipelines to prevent further spillage into the Persian Gulf. Several other sources of oil were found to be active: tankers and a damaged Kuwaiti oil refinery near Mina Al Ahmadi, tankers near Bubiyan Island, and Iraq's Mina Al Bakr terminal.

Early estimates on the volume spilled ranged around 11,000,000 US barrels (1,300,000 m³).^[7] These numbers were however significantly adjusted downward by later, more detailed studies, both by government (4,000,000 US barrels (480,000 m³) to 6,000,000 US barrels (720,000 m³)) ^[8] and private (2,000,000 US barrels (240,000 m³) to 4,000,000 US barrels (480,000 m³)) researchers.^[9]

The slick reached a maximum size of 101 miles (160 km) by 42 miles (68 km) and was 5 inches (13 cm) thick in some areas. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the size of the spill, figures place it several times  the size (by volume) of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

THROWBACKTHISDAY; makes it 25 years and TBT Blog remembers.