Attacks On Oil, Gas Fields In Middle East Causing ‘Damaging Pollutants’

The ongoing attacks on oil fields involving United States, Israel and Iran in strikes on Iran and retaliatory strikes by Iran on gulf countries are causing pollution locally and globally, 

Patrick Galey, the head of investigations at Global Witness, has  said.

According to him,  attacks on oil and gasfields in Iran, Qatar and other countries in the region are causing both local and global environmental harms “in real time”.

These include “huge amounts of incredibly damaging pollutants spewing into the atmosphere”, including methane, which is “80 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide”, said Galey.

The harms also include a “catastrophic effect on local air quality” from “methane and other pollutants from unprocessed gas … in a part of the world where [methane] and [nitrogen dioxide] levels are already higher than is healthy,” Galey said.

“These effects will persist well beyond any ceasefire or lasting peace,” he added.

Galey also noted that rebuilding after the war will also “incur an additional climate debt that all of us will pay once this war of bombs and bullets ends.”

“Anything that gets destroyed in this war will require rebuilding. And we will use fossil fuels – oil and gas – to power reconstruction.”