Local native Crear in charge of extinguishing oil fires in Iraq

Published 12:00 am Thursday, March 27, 2003

[3/27/03]Vicksburg native and former commander of the Vicksburg District Corps of Engineers Brig. Gen. Robert Crear is in charge of putting out the well fires set by Iraqis.

Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington, D.C., said Crear was sent to Kuwait from his post as commander of the Corps’ Southwest Division in Dallas along with a team of civilian personnel for the division.

“He has the oil-fire mission,” Saunders said, explaining that the Corps of Engineers was assigned the mission of seeing that the oil well fires were extinguished.

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Since only a few of the wells were apparently torched by the Iraqis, petroleum analysts believe that crude oil shipments could resume within a few weeks from the oil fields in southern Iraq.

However, an international consensus about who should manage the funds generated from renewed sales of Iraqi oil appears to be a more elusive goal.

“You could have everything ready to go from a military and technical perspective, but you might still have some political and bureaucratic wrinkles to iron out. I would think that’s fairly ironic,” said Jan Stuart, head of research for global energy futures at ABN Amro in New York.

American and British military planners had feared retreating Iraqis might sabotage their own oil fields and installations, just as they blew up more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

The last fire in Iraq could be out within 10 days “if we can get lucky,” said Brian Krause, president of Boots & Coots International Well Control, a Houston-based oil services firm hired to extinguish the blazes.

Crear was born, reared and educated in Vicksburg before attending Jackson State University where he received his bachelor’s degree in math and received his Army commission through ROTC. He served as district commander here from 1998 until he was relieved by Col. Frederick Clapp in 2001. After a stint at Corps headquarters in Washington, Crear was named commander of the Southwest Division in May 2002 and promoted to brigadier general.

It has been predicted that “within a matter of a couple of weeks,” Iraq could be pumping about 400,000 barrels daily at Rumeila South, a large oil field set afire.