Firefighters from the Boots and Coots company battling an Iraqi oil well fire. They are taking a close look while shielding themselves with metal roofing pieces to block the intense heat of the fire. This is in the Rumeilah Oil Field in southern Iraq, one of Iraq's biggest oil fields with 5 billion barrels in reserve. Many of the wells are over 3000 metres deep and produce huge volumes of oil and gas under tremendous pressure, which makes capping them very difficult and dangerous. Photographed in March 2003.