**1. Introduction**

The State of Kuwait sustained significant and widespread environmental damage resulting from the Iraqi invasion in August 1990 and during the 1991 Gulf War. The occupation of Kuwait by the Iraqi army caused substantial damage to Kuwait's environment. Several oil lakes, i.e. oil accumulation in depressions, were formed. During the 1991 Gulf War, estimates of 798 oil wells were set ablaze; out of 914 operational oil wells, 149 were damaged, 45 were gushing oil, and 155 were undamaged [1–3]. Approximately 25 million barrels of ignited crude oil were extinguished using around 12 billion gallons of seawater. The gushing oil was spreading over the desert surface from the oil fire plumes, which covered vast areas stretching from Kuwait to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Within the neighbourhood of the oil wells, various sizes of oil lakes were formed and spread across areas far away from the oil wells. Consequently, combustion products from oil fire and oil spray were able to cause contaminations of soil and groundwater [4]. More than 300 large oil lakes in low-lying areas within Kuwait desert were created from the accumulation of spilled oil. These contamination soil consist of water, salt, 28% average, in excess of 10%, respectively, where the oil and sand known as "oil lakes" were spreading over the surface of ground. These oil lakes were classified into major and minor; around 45 major oil lakes were located in the Burgan oil field as well as between Ahmadi and Maqwa oil fields; there were another 23 minor oil lakes [5–7]. Saeed [8] reported that the oil lakes contain crude oil and partially combusted oil with soot. At present, most of the oil lakes are dry, with the contamination comprising a black, moderately

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**References**


**Table 1.**

*Volume of oil trenches and oil lakes in Kuwait (source: [9]).*

hard, tar-like dry surface layer. Four categories of oil-contaminated soil layers, namely, soot, tar mat, oil lake, and dry oil lakes, were identified during the field investigation. The fifth category is clean, where no contamination was detected. As illustrated in **Table 1**, it is fortunate that the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has been successful in recovering around 21 million barrels from the oil lakes since the end of the Gulf War with approximately 49 km<sup>2</sup> of oil lakes with 16.5 × 106 m3 in volume left to be recovered [9].

This catastrophe has created one of the greatest environmental impact issues to the coast, air, soil, groundwater, and the vicinity. In addition, it has been noticed that the oil lake depth varies from a few metres to a few centimetres, which constitute more than 60 million barrels of crude oil. Overall, almost 660 million barrels of crude oil were spilled to the surface, and therefore, around 55 million tons of contaminated sand is present in the lakebeds. The persistence of such a phenomenal amount of oil over a large land area is considered as one of the main environmental concerns in the State of Kuwait. There are no similar petroleum catastrophes in history that has ever been as tragic as this incident [6, 7]. Furthermore, approximately 49 km2 which constitutes 28% of the total Kuwait land area was covered by oil mist and soot. As time goes by, lighter oil evaporated, oil mist became hard, while smaller and shallower oil lakes became dry thus forming tar mats. Under the extreme weather conditions, these contaminants continue to disintegrate slowly. The thickness of tar mat varies from a few millimetres to approximately 2 cm. The soot changed the soil beneath to black in the long run. It has been found by investigator Kwarteng [7] many of these oil lakes could not be detected from the surface since they were covered with a veneer of sand. Moreover, the author noticed in the different effected area of Kuwaiti desert that, the occasional flash floods and heavy showers were placed when the oil travelled to new sites. There are limited large-scale remediation processes implemented to deal and treat the contaminated areas thus far. The Kuwaiti environment is exposed to these oil contaminated soil and oil lakes since 1991 therefore the contamination is become a weathered oil contamination, which is required special strategy to deal with this disaster. The State of Kuwait is considered as the first country in the world who filed claims from the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) for seeking compensation to rehabilitate and remediate the areas that sustained environmental damage. In 1991 UNCC had decided to sell Iraqi oil for distributing money as recompense "the money to be taken from the Oil-for-Food Programme" for damages suffered from the Iraq invasion. In 2003, the pace of the clean-up is anticipated to significantly increase over years of researches and claims. The UNCC awarded the state of Kuwait about US\$3 billion in order to rehabilitate the effected area in the Kuwaiti desert during the Gulf War [3]. The KOC, UNCC, and Kuwait National Focal Point (KNFP) are providing the combined effort for the rehabilitation task. Currently, KOC is planned to coordinate bidding for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dinars in the upcoming months which will remain afterward every year. According to experts, the entire process

**151**

*The Assessment Strategy for Selecting and Evaluating Geoenvironmental Remediation*

Nations (UN), to rehabilitate Kuwait's environmental damage.

is expected to take approximately 29 years. In fact, Kuwait is the first country that claimed for environmental disaster from the Iraq invasion through the United

"Soil remediation" is referred to as the efforts which aim to reduce or remove the risks related to the contamination site. This objective can be easily achieved by using various ways; however, the most appropriate remediation method is governed by many factors, such as the conditions of site, financial constraints, and category of contaminants. Nathanail and Bardos [10] proposed that the remediation process can take place by degrading, removing, or transforming contaminants to the acceptable level. In situ and ex situ remediation process for rehabilitation of weathered oil-contaminated soil can be classified based on their treatment process, for instance, biological, chemical, physical, thermal, and electrical [11]. A number of various methods of remediation are presently available. Remediation techniques such as soil vapour extraction, bioremediation, electrochemical remediation and electrokinetic soil remediation, and ex situ soil washing have been developed lately in an effort to remediate soils contaminated with petroleum [12, 13]. In accordance with Ellis et al. [14], appropriate engineering solutions should be taken into account to ensure the remediation zone is contained and migration of leachate beyond the treatment zone is avoided. Should the conclusion require soil remediation, it should be tackled after the evaluation of technologies. The following outlines the soil remediation technology in comparison with the typical treatment approach. This includes remediation technologies that can improve the quality of soil through design and application which are central to soil clean-up process. The remediation is achieved by reducing or removing contaminations such as total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs), volatile organic compounds (VOC), semi-volatile

The biological remediation process is conducted by using microorganisms to degrade the contaminants to safe products and end products. Biological treatments have significant accomplishment by combining with other remediation processes and are easily implemented with contaminated soil [10]. Biological remediation is implemented at a low cost compared to the other alternative techniques [15], even though a wide variation occurs in terms of the environmental consequences, treatment time, and performance of these techniques [16]. As shown in **Figure 1**, bioremediation in 2008–2009 [17] comprised the most significant portion (21%) of the innovative activity which was reported by the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan (FCSAP) in Canada. Brief explanations of bioremediation process conducted in the remediation of contaminated soil are defined in the following section.

Land farming is considered as an ex situ remediation process in which the contaminated soil is excavated and then applied into lined beds afterwards; the contaminated soil is tilled mechanically to aerate the waste. The contaminated soil is placed in several layers 0.4 m thick. A synthetic, concrete, or clay membrane is then used to cover the contaminated soil layer. Oxygen is added, and mixing occurs via ploughing, harrowing, or milling. Nutrients and moisture can be added to support

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88166*

compounds (SVOC), and metal contents.

**2.1 Bioremediation**

*2.1.1 Land farming*

the remediation method [18].

**2. Engineering approaches**

is expected to take approximately 29 years. In fact, Kuwait is the first country that claimed for environmental disaster from the Iraq invasion through the United Nations (UN), to rehabilitate Kuwait's environmental damage.
