Green expertise helps clean up war-tarred soil

After a rare winter rain, patches of green have sprouted along the roadsides at Kuwait's vast onshore Burgan field — the second-largest oilfield in the world. The sight might seem unremarkable — just another sign of life returning to the desert after rains. But beneath this seemingly ordinary renewal lies an extraordinary story of technological triumph over one of history's greatest environmental catastrophes.

For Kuwaitis, these fragile patches of green are far more than seasonal regrowth. They are symbols of hope — tangible proof that land poisoned by war can be healed. Since 2021, a soil rehabilitation project has quietly reversed the scars left by the worst oil spill in human memory.

The damage was done more than three decades ago. During the Gulf War in 1991, retreating Iraqi forces torched nearly 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, turning the desert sky black.

An international coalition of firefighters battled the fires for months until the last well was finally capped on Nov 6, 1991, but the crude that gushed forth and pooled in the sand remained. Hundreds of toxic "oil lakes" lingered, poisoning groundwater and transforming vast swaths of desert into toxic asphalt flats.

"For nearly 10 months, everything in Kuwait was turned upside down," said Mohammad Mubarak Al-Qahtani, head of the environmental remediation program at Kuwait Oil Company, or KOC.

"Daylight was obscured by thick smoke, and nights were lit up by the distant glow of burning oil wells. A third of Kuwait's territory was polluted, and its ecosystem was devastated. Birds avoided Kuwait entirely, migrating elsewhere. Pollutants even drifted as far as the Himalayas," he said.

Khaled A. Al-Haid, a senior engineer at KOC, was 13 years old at the time. He still remembers being "terrified to see an ocean of crude everywhere". "I asked my uncle: 'You can pump out the oil, but what do you do with the soil?'"

His question went unanswered until late 2019, when Kuwait decided to seek a global solution.

The tender attracted global bidders. Among them was Hangzhou Zaopin ST Co Ltd, an environmental startup from China. Though it had no prior overseas experience, it had a key advantage: proprietary microbial remediation technology honed over a decade of research and supported by partnerships with China's top universities.

"We came to Kuwait with confidence — not in our brand, but in our expertise," said Dai Baiping, founder and CEO of Zaopin, recalling the 2021 bid victory. "It was our first major international project, and it felt like the moment our technology had been waiting for."

Inside Burgan today, Chinese technology is on full display.

At one operation site, rows of contaminated black soil — nearly 470,000 metric tons — are spread across a treatment area. Specialized vehicles churn the soil, while sprinklers spray water infused with petroleum-degrading bacteria. In just three months, the oil content in this soil drops from 5 percent to below 1 percent — clean enough to meet Kuwait's environmental standards.

"We succeeded in identifying and cultivating microbes from more than 2,000 bacterial strains collected from Kuwait's oil sludge," Dai said at Zaopin's laboratory in Kuwait City. "We then bioengineered them into highly efficient 'oil-eaters'."

Using this method, the company has already treated over 5 million tons of contaminated soil in Kuwait.

Microbes are not the only tool in the toolbox.

Suitable for planting

For heavily contaminated soil with oil content exceeding 5 percent, Zaopin deployed a second method: soil washing. Using heat, chemical agents and mechanical separation, the process strips crude from the sand and recovers it for reuse — transforming the blackened soil into a resource suitable for planting.

Mohammad Khalaf, a senior KOC engineer at the site, admitted he was skeptical when the project launched in 2021. "To be honest, I didn't believe the Chinese soil washing method would work," he said. "But they overcame every technical challenge and delivered certified results. Now I don't just trust them 100 percent — I trust them 110 percent."

Ahmed El-Sherif, COO of Heisco — a Kuwaiti industrial firm that brought Zaopin to the Middle East — noted that the Chinese company's annual R&D investment has enabled it to master core soil remediation technologies, establish a strong industry presence and deliver greater value to its partners.

"The technologies of Chinese companies have truly impressed us all," he said.

The numbers speak for themselves. In December, the consortium overseeing the southern Burgan rehabilitation project set a record: 3 million tons of treated soil and 150,000 barrels of recovered crude oil.

Meanwhile, other Chinese companies are joining the effort. Jereh Group, a Chinese oilfield services and equipment manufacturer, recently passed performance tests for a pyrolysis system designed to treat the most heavily contaminated sludge from the oil lakes — while recovering high-quality crude in the process.

Yu Yang, Jereh's Kuwait country manager for marketing, said the equipment heats sludge to 300-600 C, effectively processing viscous deposits in oil lakes and recovering crude oil via the company's self-developed, full-process oil sludge treatment technology.

The impact is no longer just industrial. It is ecological.

Back at Zaopin's site, the third-generation soil washing equipment will go online in the near future. Its capacity will nearly double to 1,300 tons per day, while microbial treatment cycles are expected to shrink from three months to two months.

"We're not just fixing soil," said Dai. "We're helping bring back a desert ecosystem that was written off as lost."

cuihaipei@chinadaily.com.cn