Oil well fire mars celebrations over massive Uzbek oil strike

MINBULAK, Uzbekistan - The tank fired into the base of the burning tower of oil and gas, shaking the surrounding dusty cotton fields.


"Hit her again, she's still kicking", shouted one of the ten U. S. oil well workers who this week landed in Namangan, a sleepy city of 300, 000 in Southeast Uzbekistan, to help put out an oil well fire that has been burning here outside city limits for more than two weeks.


Last month Uzbekistan struck oil, lots of it, with rampant speculation now that it could rank among the top deposits in the world. Sources here say that this deposit could make the landlocked, former Soviet republic another Saudi Arabia overnight if it develops the necessary infrastructure.


Uzbek officials are reluctant to cite numbers, but say well pressure (1, 500 atmospheres below the surface) has not diminished, and that before the fire started some 15, 000 cubic meters of high quality crude spewed out daily.


More than 150, 000 tons have already been gathered in trucks, rail cars and four makeshift 5, 000 ton reservoirs.


"I can't give specific numbers on the size of the deposit, it's the first step of the Uzbek oil industry. I can say in the next few years, we will not be dependent on oil imports", said Adushukur Rashidov; chief geologist at Uzbekneft, the Tashkent-based state oil monopoly. Uzbekistan now relies on Russia for more than 5 million tons a year.


Western observers at the sight of the blaze are more up front.


"It's probably one of the biggest oil finds in the world", said Bob Cudd, president of Cudd Pressure Control, a Woodward, Oklahoma based company that helped put out some 300 well fires in Kuwait after the Iraqi retreat.


The Cudd team arrived here Monday under a verbal agreement with the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations to "help them in any way we can", Cudd said. Thus far only Uzbek specialists, some of whom helped cap two wells in Kuwait under Cudd's guidance, have attempted to put out the fire.


Tuesday's tank plan (five blasts), though, may have fractured the well's interior, making it more difficult to put a sleeve over the exposed casing to move the flame up and away from the base of the well -- the work area.


"Now there's a fire in my work area and I can't get there. At first it wasn't a hard well to put out. Now it's hard, extremely hard", said Alien Walsh, an oil equipment specialist with Patterson Service, a sister company of Cudd, here handling an equipment airlift.


The result: The fire could now burn for months rather than days, as was previously predicted before the blasts.


Some seven U. S. military C-141 cargo planes have arrived here this week full of equipment to attempt to put out the blaze, which now roars some 200 meters high at 1, 500 degrees Celsius. Most metal around the 5, 237 meter deep well has melted, and the heat singes unprotected workers hair from 100 yards away. If the tank has damaged the wells interior, however, most of the equipment is unsuitable for immediate use, Mr. Walsh said.


Uzbek officials say that both parties agreed to the tank plan, although after the blast they conceded it didn't work.


"Our plan, agreed upon by Uzbek specialists and our U. S. partner, was simpler, but it wasn't successful", said Akhbar Rakhimov, technical director of the team of Uzbek specialists here trying to cap the well. Rakhimov said that the team of Americans arrived here too late and with a more complicated plan.


There is some silent disagreement, though. Uzbek officials at first detained and questioned this uninvited reporter, the first Western reporter allowed into the heavily guarded sight. and Uzbek officials here seemed more concerned with keeping the opinions of U. S. specialists under wraps.


"They just arrived, it is the Uzbek specialists that have done all the work here and know the well", one Uzbek project spokesman said.


Cudd workers say it's not their well, and ultimately not their decision.


U. S. technology using water and sand pumped at high pressure, they say, would have severed the well cleanly without rupturing it. Now, the fire is hotter, bigger, and more difficult to control.


In the long run, however, most here say the fire will be put out and this central Asian country will be oil rich. What's more, the fire, for now, poses relatively little environmental risk, as opposed to if it were extinguished immediately.


A pipeline seven miles long was completed by 600 Uzbek workers Wednesday to link the well to Axtash, a rail transport center. A total of 1, 300 workers and specialists are now working three shifts a day. These efforts are not enough to contain the gushing oil.


Before the fire, caused by a spark as the drilling rig was removed, oil flowed onto adjacent cotton and wheat fields, and into the nearby Syr Darya river.


Black smoke now spews out from the fire, which burns thousands of barrels per day. Thus far both Uzbek and U. S. workers say the environmental impact is negligible, however. Workers here report some "black rain", although they said it is normal.


What's more, Cudd says that since Uzbekistan has no prevailing wind, it is better to let the well burn to avoid ecological damage to the river and farms. "The smoke is no problem. For now. it's better to let it burn", he said.