Kuwait officials have tapped the resources of BioGenesis Enterprises Inc., a division of Oak Creek-based Amiran Technologies LLC, to remediate the Kuwait oil spill from the first Gulf War.
BioGenesis has an initial contract of $15 million to provide a sand washing system to extract and separate oil, salts and other contaminants. The project will initially employ about 200 people.
Biogenesis will use its proprietary systems to clean up the oil and other contaminants in the sands of Kuwait. The oil spill was caused by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops in 1990 and the oil leakage lasted at least eight months after the Gulf War ended in 1991. Hussein’s forces blew up more than 600 oil wells. The flowing oils and the billions of gallons of sea salt water used to extinguish the flames altered thousands of acres of desert sand, and caused extensive air pollution, plant and animal mortality. Some of the oil has seeped over 40 feet into the sand and the aquifer used for drinking water and has severely damaged ecosystems.
“To provide some perspective about the massive nature of this disaster, the contaminated areas are about 10 times the size of the isle of Manhattan, or three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, or about the size of the state of New Jersey,” said Mohsen Amiran, chief executive officer of BioGenesis.
Amiran Technologies has developed processes to remove contamination from polluted materials. Amiran, a scientist with an expertise in organic chemistry and the founder of Amiran Technologies LLC, has developed the company’s processes to remove contamination from polluted materials. The company says it has the capability to establish facilities, with its own equipment and equipment built to spec and provided by another company, and use chemicals that it has developed, to treat contaminated materials, breaking them down into separate, clean, useful materials.
The United Nations War Reparations Fund has allocated $3 billion for the Kuwait sands clean-up. Iraq pays five percent of its oil revenues as war reparations and still owes Kuwait about $22 billion, according to BioGenesis.
This is the second major project announced by Amiran Technologies this year. In April, Amiran Technologies announced that it will build a $12 million plant in Maria Stein, Ohio, to process swine, poultry and dairy livestock manure into dry organic fertilizer for commercial sale. The fertilizer will be pathogen and e coli free, and will be priced competitively with synthetic fertilizers on the market, the company says.
