Master of the Southern Well

I visited the city of Ahmadi, where the vast Burgan oil field lies beneath its soil, for the first time in the 1950s, and it was our playground. Over time, it became a model in its streets, houses, layout, gardens, and flowers lining its roads, with trees surrounding its sports fields, sports and social clubs, and cinema. Even the supermarket goods were “unique!” Despite Ahmadi’s modern organization, we failed to build even one of our residential areas in the same manner. Instead, the government constructed homes lacking any aesthetic appeal for low- and middle-income families, even though Ahmadi’s house designs were more suitable, indeed ideal, for Kuwait’s climate, and its gas and other service needs were supplied directly from the source. After seventy years, we still stubbornly use dangerous and ugly gas cylinders; perhaps there is a mystery behind this?

We would end our “weekly shopping” by passing through Ahmadi and buying whatever we liked from the Zamzam store, owned by the late Abdulkhader Abdulrahim. By the mid-1960s, we had friends who were employees of the Kuwait Oil Company, and we often lamented the simplicity and beauty of their homes compared to the concrete fortresses we lived in. Their houses were simple, beautiful, and cool, with trees and flowers filling their corners.

Whenever I visited Ahmadi, I was puzzled by the name “South Well” given to its hospital. I assumed it referred to the site of the first oil well drilled, and I wondered why the wellhead was located on what looked like a small mound. It took nearly sixty years for me to discover that “Southwell” does not mean “Southern Well,” but is a single word referring to Sir Philip Southwell, the first chairman of the board of directors of the Kuwait Oil Company. He was honored by having his name given to the city’s hospital when it opened in 1960. His tenure lasted from 1946, the year the first oil shipment was exported at the end of World War II, until his retirement in 1959. The hospital’s name changed several times subsequently before settling on “Ahmadi Hospital.”

After a long absence, I visited Ahmadi a few days ago at the invitation of a friend holding a senior technical position, to learn about the company’s activities and visit its exhibition recounting the company’s history. There, I discovered how ignorant I had been, perhaps like the vast majority of citizens, about what this city means to us. Despite being the source of the good livelihood we enjoy and a symbol of the state’s prosperity, and the home of the “Burgan field,” Kuwait’s premier oil field, whose potential was discovered in 1938 but closed by Britain due to its war with Germany, only to be reopened eight years later, and which remains the largest in the world after Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field.

During that visit, I learned much that had previously been hidden from me, especially after touring the company’s exhibition. The presentation, lasting nearly half an hour, was distinctive. Through explanations by young Kuwaiti staff, I learned many secrets of oil production and export methods. Naturally, we watched a realistic simulation of Saddam’s massive environmental crime, when he issued his cowardly orders in February to destroy approximately 1,073 oil wells, resulting in fires in about 737 of them. Even after 36 years, the world still wonders about the motive behind committing this greatest environmental crime in history. No one benefited from its commission; it harmed the perpetrator as much as it harmed the owners, making it one of the most foolish crimes in history.

Note: Despite all the controversy surrounding the exaggerations of the British management and its excessive spending on itself during the period preceding the nationalization of the company, as well as the financial benefits they enjoyed, it is fair to acknowledge, based on what I know, that the national management, which largely succeeded it, was no better than the former. Ahmad Al-Sarraf