Word: km
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Then came word of a full-scale disaster. Early in the week, the slightly nauseating odor of oil was noticeable along coastal areas of Saudi Arabia near the border with Kuwait. Within days, observers could see the source of the smell: a 16-km (10-mile) band of crude, so thick in places that the water heaved like mud. Iraq is believed to have opened the spigots of Kuwait's main supertanker-loadin g pier, the Sea Island terminal, 16 km offshore from the country's major petroleum refinery and loading complex at Mina Al-Ahmadi. Through pipes leading from...
...scientists, including the astronomer Carl Sagan and Abdullah Toukan, science adviser to Jordan's King Hussein, that oil-field fires could bring on a nuclear winter, affecting weather patterns all around the world with devastating effects on agriculture. Nuclear blasts and volcanoes can send smoke exploding 16 km or more into the upper atmosphere, enabling it to travel long distances around the globe; but the worst oil-field inferno would probably lack the upward thrust to send smoke even one-tenth as high into the air before it started to cool and descend...
...almost none for the environment. Since the gulf war began, allied planes and missiles have pounded Iraqi chemical- weapons plants, situated about 25 miles northwest of the Shi'ite holy city of Samarra, that manufacture mustard gas and nerve agents. Because the plants are surrounded by a 25-sq.-km (9.6-sq.-mi.) "exclusion zone," the likelihood of a deadly plume invading populated areas is small. Explosives would also tend to break the gases down into less deadly substances. Harmful chemicals that penetrated the soil would disappear without a trace within a few weeks at most...
...equally huge project is Shell's $500 million Bullwinkle platform, 130 km (80 miles) off the Louisiana coast. Standing 162 stories high -- taller by 49 m (161 ft.) than Chicago's Sears Tower -- it looms like a gigantic iceberg in 412 m (1,353 ft.) of water, only its top-deck production facilities visible above the water. Chevron is planning a big project nearby. Southeast of New Orleans, Exxon is operating a 110-story platform, and a few miles away British Petroleum is erecting its own 100-story behemoth...
...current projects are only the beginning. "The real potential lies farther and deeper offshore," says Roger Abel, Conoco's general manager for production engineering. "The big easies have all been found." Shell is investing $1.3 billion to build and install a tension-leg platform some 411 km (255 miles) southeast of Houston that will retrieve oil from a world-record depth of 872 m (2,860 ft.). Called Auger, the giant is scheduled to begin producing from 32 wells in 1993. Shell has also drilled an exploratory well at a 2,300-m (7,500-ft.) depth, and Mobil...