Primary Author | Conference Presenter:
Aisha Al-Baroud
Sr. Environmental Engineer
Kuwait Oil Company

Co-Authors:
Nada Al-Qallaf, KOC, Kuwait, Ahmadi
Hussain Al-Kandari, KOC, Kuwait, Ahmadi

In 1991, the world witnessed one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recorded history when approximately 700 Kuwaiti oil wells were destroyed and set ablaze during the conclusion of the Gulf War with Iraq. The environmental consequences were colossal. Millions of liters of liquid crude oil were released into the waters of the Arabian Gulf. The surrounding desert habitat was devastated, resulting in the destruction of native ecosystems and consequently impacting fauna and flora life in the affected areas.
When the last of the fires were finally extinguished, Kuwait faced a dire environmental remediation challenge. Over 26 million cubic meters of soil was heavily contaminated within the oil field areas. The contamination came in several forms, including wet oil lakes, dry oil lakes, oil contaminated piles, tarcrete, wellhead pits. Moreover, in North West Kuwait along the coast line, coastal trenches were dug and filled with crude oil as well as explosive ordinance.
The necessity to restore the environment back to its pre-war state lead to the establishment of the Kuwait Environmental Remediation Program (KERP), one of the largest environmental rehabilitation programs in the world funded through the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC). Headed by the Kuwait National Focal Point (KNFP) in coordination with Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).
Over its lifetime, through numerous projects, KERP will identify and remediate millions of cubic meters of contaminated soils necessitating excavation and remediation works on an unprecedented scale. In order to demonstrate the successful identification and verification of the remediation works, tens of thousands of environmental samples with multiple determinants will be collected and analyzed.
Considering the vastness of the program’s scope and the enormous amounts of data collection required, KOC began searching for an environmental database system that would ensure consistently high quality environmental data in a standardized format across all projects that could be appropriately stored and readily interrogated, to validate KERP meeting the United Nations requirements. After significant research and selection process of the industry leaders, Earthsoft’s EQUIS was selected for this purpose.
EQUIS stands for Environmental Quality Information System and is the industry leader in advanced environmental data management and decision support systems. EQUIS, will enable KERP to track, monitor and visualize laboratory results across a wide range of matrices including soil, groundwater, air and ecological function. As referenced above, KERP will collect tens of thousands of environmental samples from the contaminated areas as part of remediation projects in the Raudhatain, Sabriyah and Greater Burgan oilfields, thus EQuIS is crucial for the way forward in KERP.EQUIS software contains three components, EQUIS Enterprise, EQUIS Professional, and EQUIS collect. EQUIS enterprises utilize the overall review purpose, which manage the data within the system. EQUIS Professional serves the purpose of data loading, editing and integrating other applications. Moreover, EQUIS collect is used on collecting all relevant data within the fields.
EQUIS is utilized by managing the remediation data of existing projects within KOC. This paper mainly demonstrates EQUIS implementation process, determines the analytical tools which will allow remediation staff, contractors and risk assessors to rapidly identify the best remedial approaches. Moreover, this software will be integrated with Arc GIS software. This implementation will lead to provide better report quality for future analysis and reference.
Keywords: Contaminated Features, EQUIS, and Environmental data.