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Mitigating Potentially Weaponized Natural Phenomena

Bart Kemper, P.E. Principal Engineer, Kemper Engineering Services, LLC Baton Rouge, LA, USA www.kemperengineering.com

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Traditionally, chemical attacks are seen as military bombs or home-brewed releases. Some of the original chemical attacks in WWI used industrial gasses such as phosgene. Similarly, industrial sites can be used to create a chemical attack, which is since September 2001. However, the potentially more pernicious attacks could use naturally occurring phenomena, such as sour gas oil fields. Sour gas oil fields are called such due to the high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide (H2S). It combines with blood chemistry the same way as cyanide. At 3 parts per million (ppm) it is hazardous and can be detected by a rotten egg smell. At 100 ppm it overwhelms the olfactory nerves and sickens the victim. At 600 ppm it can have a knock-out effect and can be lethal in 30 minutes. Slightly more exposure, such as 800 ppm, and death is in minutes. Exposure is cumulative. Since cartridge-style protective masks are ineffective, personnel would have to have Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) for protection. SCBA is logistically intensive for sustained operations. The northern oilfields of Iraq are sour. During the preparation for the 2003 attack there were many questions of how to secure the oilfields and safely operate in the region. Wellheads could not only be damaged by combat actions, they could be sabotaged by being pulled open by trucks or blasted open with a small amount of explosives. The main highway from Turkey travels south through the Kirkuk area in the heart of the oilfields, then continues down to Baghdad. This is a key route for both forces. Given military personnel are not equipped with SCBA and fielding a large force with SCBA would be logistically prohibitive, a large H2S release would act as a persistent chemical agent and block operations. Civilians do not have any protective equipment, let alone SCBA, so any such action would also kill many civilians. Saddam Hussein had already demonstrated complete willingness to slaughter thousands of his own citizens, so the possibility of civilian deaths was not seen as a deterrent to weaponizing the northern oil fields to block a northern attack. This heightened the need to quantify and mitigate this threat. Initial efforts used HAZ, a commercially available software package from BREEZ Software that models chemical releases, fires, and other industrial hazards. Open source information of the regions oilfield chemistry and a typical release was rapidly determined. Different wind speeds, terrain roughness values, and weather conditions were modeled to develop a range of chemical plume geometries. An example of one of the plumes is shown in Fig. 1 below. These results were used by CBRNE personnel to update local threats due to known wellhead locations. Given H2S is cumulative and these would be persistent sources, overlapping plumes gave a reasonable estimate of the effects of multiple sources. Military engineers and chemical warfare specialists used these estimates to perform risk-based decisions, develop contingency plans, and to continually update the potential H2S threat in key areas. These estimates were also used to develop actions that safeguarded the northern oilfields.

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The National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) later produced a full scale model with hundreds of wellhead releases, factoring in full 3-D terrain and weather effects. This simulation used classified high-definition topographic information and mainframe computers. The results were presented in an unclassified briefing at George Mason University and are shown in Fig. 2 below. There are two main significances to this potential CBRNE event. The first is the use of industrial software to develop timely military estimates for use in planning and operations. Government resources stateside did not provide a timely response to plan operations and safeguard the oilfields. The other significance was the commercially available industrial software results, combined with the estimates by experienced CBRNE personnel, was validated by the more comprehensive simulation. Other regions have sour gas fields. In 2003 China had a H2S release that killed over 200 people and sickened over 9000. Geothermal energy, natural gas, and methane could also be weaponized. This adds to the disaster preparation requirements in regions that have natural phenomena that could be weaponized in addition to chemical facilities, pipelines, and transportation containers. However, the same methods can be used to quantify the potential threats and develop mitigation techniques.

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About the Author: Bart Kemper is the President of Kemper Engineering Services, LLC of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A graduate of the U.S. Army Engineer School and Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Kemper served as a lead structural, mechanical and security engineer with the U.S. Army, where he also commanded military units.

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