Firefighters from the Kuwait Oil Company (called KWWK: Kuwait Wild Well Killers) pray at noon by the first oil well fire they were working on in Iraq's Rumaila Oil Field. They did a double prayer at noon so they would not have to stop later in the day if they were at a critical phase. Later in the day they extinguished this smoky fire and the next day stopped the flow of gas and oil with drilling mud using what is called a stinger, a tapered pipe on the end of a long steel boom controlled by a bulldozer. Drilling mud, under high pressure, is pumped through the stinger into the well, stopping the flow of oil and gas. Many of the wells are 10,000 feet deep and produce huge volumes of oil and gas under tremendous pressure, which makes capping them very difficult and dangerous. Rumaila is also spelled Rumeilah.. (Supporting image from the project Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.)
