CALGARY (Sun Media) -- Mike Miller\'s encounters with the handiwork of Saddam Hussein go back 15 years, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war that consumed a million lives.

It was then that Miller and his renowned team of Safety Boss oilfield firefighters prepared to save a trio of petroleum wells in the warring countries\' disputed border area that had been rigged with explosives.

But as they were set to be choppered into the area, word arrived that Iraqi troops had taken prisoner a team of Iranian oilfield specialists at the site of their destination.

\"Obviously, it wasn\'t where we wanted to be, so we didn\'t go,\" said Miller.

Miller is more than eager to toil through his third Persian Gulf War, dousing oilwell fires set by retreating Iraqi troops.

But already, crucial preparation time has been squandered, says a frustrated, apprehensive Miller; as of yesterday, he still hadn\'t received confirmation on a firefighting contract from the most likely sources -- the U.S. government or military.

Yesterday, reports indicated Iraqi troops have set some oilwells on fire in the country\'s south.

\"It\'s certainly our position we should have been over there before the wells are set on fire,\" says the thickly mustachioed Miller.

\"In the 1991 war, it was three or four months before we had all our equipment over there.\"

Canada\'s refusal to lend its moral and material support to the U.S. invasion might well have been a factor for Canadian firms like his being overlooked for so long, he said.

\"It\'s an American war and who knows how international they\'ll be ... Canadian companies could be out billions of dollars,\" he said, adding he knows of at least one U.S. competitor landing a contract.

A Safety Boss contract to tame the raging fires could be worth $50 million, figures Miller, who has spoken by phone to U.S. defence officials recently, offering them expert advice.

\"We supplied them with a picture of a wellhead (wired for detonation),\" he says.

That huge contract figure is due primarily to the massive scope of the challenge in Iraq, a nation 25 times larger than tiny Kuwait, where Safety Boss earned a reputation as possibly the world\'s foremost oilwell firefighting outfit.

In 1991, the Calgary-based firm extinguished 210 blazing wells in three months -- the most of any company assigned to tackle the 732 wellheads damaged by the Iraqis.

Miller recalls descending into that Dante\'s inferno, where searing heat generated by blazing oil melted nearby roads into molten asphalt.

\"We were really concerned about the health of our people -- the smoke inhalation and the wind conditions were absolutely unbearable,\" he recalls.

\"If the wind changed one way, we had to abandon (the well).\"

Aside from hydrocarbon particulate clogging the air, firefighters in the battle zone could be menaced by depleted uranium dust left by low radiation ammunition used by U.S. forces to destroy armoured vehicles -- believed by many to cause cancer.

To counter these hazards, Safety Boss has fine-tuned decontamination equipment that was kept on hand by local authorities during last year\'s G-8 Summit in Kananaskis.

What that equipment can\'t counter, however, are the explosives planted on well sites by the Iraqis, or the unexploded ordnance dropped by Allied aircraft that littered the Kuwait desert 12 years ago.

\"One of our pickup trucks hit one and it blew the front of the truck off and deafened one of our guys for a day.\"

Land mines on roads and near the well sites are yet another obstacle and in 1991 in Kuwait, the company had a 12-member team to defuse them.

Also, unlike the largely friendly population they encountered in Kuwait, there\'s the threat of attack by Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation.

\"They\'ve got to secure areas for us -- we\'re not going to be capping wells if someone\'s shooting at us,\" he says.

Once again, Safety Boss and its 150 crewmembers would employ high-pressure water jets, then dry chemicals to kill the flames, rather than the explosives used by competitors, says Miller.

\"Explosives create a lot of shrapnel and is not very successful,\" he said.

Once doused, a well shutoff device is placed over the well, through which heavy mud is poured, halting the flow of hydrocarbons to finish the job.

But being able to perform those tasks in Iraq after developing the slick routine in Kuwait will present multiple challenges, not the least being the size of the country and its diverse landscape.

\"You need a completely different set of equipment for each area and how do you get water to every site?\" he says warily.

\"It\'s like a train wreck -- there\'s nothing typical of any well fire.\"

Anxious to head back into the furnace, Miller and company fear the train has already left the station.