Side note, I read that the firestorms in Germany, late in WW2 got so hot that the asphalt in the streets spontaneously combusted.
I found another, more in depth account of this at
Alexander's Oil and Gas Connection. They say that some of the crude oil is being used to power electricity producing turbines designed to run on natural gas and adapted to run on oil at some cost by the USA Corps of Eng. Apparently Iraqi oil people are reluctant to use nat. gas because they believe the pressure from the gas makes oil extraction easier, which I imagine is true.
The original article mentions that more modern, better maintained facilities have a lot less marginal by-product than do Iraq's run down system.