The Nowruz oil and gas field was discovered in 1966. Potential oil reserves were estimated at 120 million tons of oil and more than 140 billion cubic meters of gas. Production at the field was halted shortly after the outbreak of hostilities between Iraq and Iran in September 1980. It is believed that the total volume of oil entering the Persian Gulf daily at that time exceeded 1,300 tons, and over the entire period, more than 130,000 tons of oil entered the water. The cause was clearly visible in clear weather – oil platforms off the Iranian coast were burning and collapsing. Using skimmers and other technical means, part of the spills were eliminated. Nevertheless, according to various estimates, about two-thirds of all spilled oil settled on the seabed.

The area of the spills was so vast that the threat to desalination plants located on the coast of the Persian Gulf was considered quite real – several now declassified CIA reports, for example, are devoted to assessing and analyzing this threat. On a map excerpt placed in one of such reports, one can see how large the oil slick was just a couple of months after the first oil releases. The most radical concerns expressed by the expert community of those years were that, given sufficient duration of the spill, the slick would cover the entire surface of the Gulf. In addition to the emergency services of the Persian Gulf countries, a Norwegian contractor, the company Norpol, was involved in eliminating the spill, but even joint efforts did not allow for a quick cleanup of the oil spill.

This spill entered the top three largest in human history. It threatened the desalination plants of Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and affected other areas outside the jurisdiction of the warring parties. For example, fish imports to the UAE were halted due to oil contamination of fishing grounds, and Saudi Arabia's commercial ports periodically closed due to the appearance of oil slicks.

The incident at the Nowruz field became a turning point for legal assessments of the impact of armed conflicts on the environment, resulting in the emergence of international mechanisms for joint response to such spills. For example, the Kuwait Regional Convention on Cooperation for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Pollution of 1978 came into effect, which during the Iran-Iraq War could not ensure the protection of the Persian Gulf waters from oil spills.