Iraq: Iraq Starts Campaign to Clear Southern Oilfields of Landmines

Apr 7, 2015 | NRT
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BASRA -- In Iraq's vast southern desert, de-mining teams are working to remove millions of Saddam-era landmines and explosive ordnance that litter Iraq's giant oil fields, hampering the country's oil boom and delaying investment. Teams of the Arabian Gulf Mine Action Company are now striving to ramp up production from 17-billion-barrel supergiant Rumaila and the other massive fields surrounding Basra. Now recovering from decades of conflict, Iraq may have 25 million landmines and millions of other unexploded bombs that are slowing development of some of the world's largest fields and one of Iraq's key cities, the southern oil hub of Basra.