#International unearth family secrets series#

The World Bank, as part of an effort to track worldwide flaring, uses data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has heat-detecting satellites that measure fires from lit flare stacks. That’s also true for the rest of Iraq’s oil infrastructure. There is no official, publicly available record of gas flaring at Rumaila. What it does not mention is that gas flaring at Rumaila is staggeringly high, despite repeated promises to fix the issue.

It boasts on its website of its long history in Iraq and talks of “helping to lay the foundations for long-term success” in the country. BP still makes hundreds of millions of dollars from Rumaila - in 2020 its post-tax profit from the field was $358m. This is not the case in Iraq, where BP is instead paid a fee by the government each year, which BP takes as allocations of oil. Some oil contracts entitle companies to a percentage of all the money generated by a field. Driving from one end of the field to the other takes about three hours, excluding time spent waiting at checkpoints guarded by armed militias.īP became the lead contractor at Rumaila field in 2009. Rumaila, the oil field, produces the equivalent of 1.45 million barrels of oil a day (boe/d) - about a third of Iraq’s total oil production - and holds estimated reserves of 17 billion barrels. The air is often thick with a blend of desert sand and fumes from the nearby oil wells. Half the area is known locally as “shadow town”, due to the intermittent supply of electricity. His neighbourhood is filled with speedily constructed single-storey homes and businesses. I was so weak.”Īli’s home town of Rumaila shares a name with one of the world’s largest oil fields.

“This was when I played football for Zubair before I got sick. “Yes.” He flicked to the next picture, then another. “Even your eyebrows fell out?” a friend asked. This is after the chemo - I lost my eyebrows.” The BBC filmed him with friends in Basra, as he showed them photos from his time in hospital. He has recovered from leukaemia, which he and his family attribute to the pollution from the oil industry they live alongside. Ali Hussein Juloud in his living room in Rumaila. He wears a face mask most of the time when out and about, both to protect his weakened immune system from the ongoing pandemic and to give him some kind of shield from the pollution that surrounds him. Alongside the bed is a bipartite wooden chest, left open at the moment when the owners fled.Ali Hussein Juloud lives with his family in a town about 30 miles west of Basra, inside the boundaries of one of the world’s largest oil fields.Īli, who spoke to BBC reporters in Iraq, is 19. It is a group of seven triptychs, tied together by a small cord both horizontally and vertically,” Pompeii officials say.Ī bedroom complete with furnishings is on the lower floor adjacent to the lararium, housing a wooden bed similar in structure to three beds discovered last year in the Villa of Civita Giuliana in the Room of the Slaves. “A truly unique find, it has allowed us to create the first example of a cast which allows a perfect yield of both volume and detail. In the upper rooms, well-preserved ceramic vessels for everyday use in the kitchen and the canteen, but also vessels made from sigillata-a type of Roman fine table ceramic-and from glass were found within a large cupboard, which collapsed during the eruption.Ī small cast of waxed tablets is another significant discovery. Recent archaeological digs revealed four new rooms: two upper areas on the first floor of the house and those on the ground floor in front of the lararium. The small, furnished rooms were discovered around a lararium, a room of worship decorated with depictions of plants and birds (this part of the site was excavated in 2018 in Regio V, one of the largest districts of the ancient city).

#International unearth family secrets series#

Archaeologists at the ancient site, which was engulfed by volcanic ash in 79AD spewing from Mount Vesuvius, have unearthed a series of rooms in a residence belonging to a middle-class family whose household items were buried in the volcanic debris.