Canadian crude spilling in America
Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline delivers Canadian tar sands to Texas for processing. It has sprung a leak in a nice little neighborhood called Mayflower, south of Conway, Arkansas. Noxious fumes make the neighborhood unbearable and black oil bubbles down the street and into the storm drain. Now this pipeline has created some jobs (they will need to hire people to clean it up), but I worry that the men and women with those jobs will inhale benzene and other cancer-causing fumes. Exxon, like BP, does not care that much about safety or the people they hire–and you can tell that because of the preventable accidents that occur under their watch.
Ed Markey is opposed to building the Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry even more Canadian tar sands–800,000 barrels per day–into America, risking further damage to people’s property and health, and guaranteeing excessive carbon pollution in the atmosphere for us all. There are cleaner ways to get our energy than the dirtiest tar in the ground. If we are going to give the next generation a world that is liveable, we have to start electing real environmental leaders like Ed Markey.
Thank you, joelpatterson.
From Reuters:
“Exxon also had no specific estimate of how much crude oil had spilled, but the company said 12,000 barrels of oil and water had been recovered…”
“Exxon said it staged the response to handle 10,000 barrels of oil ‘to ensure adequate resources are in place.'”
So they have no idea how much is left, but already have had to handle more spillage than they were prepared for. On a line that carries less than one tenth of the oil Keystone XL would carry. And it’s a less corrosive variety than Keystone too.
Also interesting in the article is the history of recent oil spills and safety violations.
An oil spill of more than 1,000 barrels into a Wisconsin field from an Enbridge Inc pipeline last summer kept that line shuttered for around 11 days.
On Wednesday, a train carrying Canadian crude derailed in Minnesota, spilling 15,000 gallons of oil.
Last week [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration] proposed that Exxon pay a $1.7 million fine over pipeline safety violations stemming from a July 2011 oil spill from its Silvertip pipeline in the Yellowstone River. The line, which carries 40,000 barrels per day in Montana, leaked about 1,500 barrels of crude after heavy flooding in the area.
Glad to read the leak has been stopped and rapid cleanup under way. I was shocked at what looks like a wealthy neighborhood, having an oil pipeline in their backyard.
It’s just a pipeline. There wasn’t an earthquake or an explosion.
Some people have warned that tar sands are more corrosive than the regular crude that has been piped out of the ground. Perhaps this tar sands stuff just ate a hole in the pipe, the way road salts eat the bodies of our cars up here in the North.
BTW, I don’t think Mayflower is all that wealthy. The median home price is $128K. Nearby Maumelle’s median home price is $208K. Conway, the college town next door, has a median home price of $136K.
If we can put a man on he moon, I am sure we can make a pipe that won’t corrode. But just because there was an accident, we don’t give up, we get up and keep moving forward.
We’re you on the road today? Was like rush hour traffic.
Sad to say RT News (English language out of Moscow station) had better coverage of this than any of our networks this morning. They were focused on Obama’s basketball skills and the Michael Jackson lawsuit…