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Backyard Nightmare
Photograph by Jacob Slaton, Reuters
Crude oil flowed down driveways and swamped grass lawns in Mayflower, Arkansas, after an oil pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon. At least 12,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil and water spilled into a housing development over the weekend, causing the evacuation of 22 homes in the Little Rock suburb. Here, spilled crude fills a drainage ditch near the evacuated homes.
ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline, which is more than six decades old, runs from Patoka, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas, and can transport up to 90,000 barrels of oil per day. The company said Monday it was still investigating the cause of the spill, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified as "major." Cleanup is ongoing.
The Mayflower spill was the second in one week that involved tar sands crude. Last Wednesday, a train derailed in western Minnesota and leaked an estimated 350 barrels of oil. The transport of oil by rail in the United States has grown in recent years, as producers struggle to move new bounties of crude from Canada and North Dakota south to refineries. (See related story: "Oil Train Revival: North Dakota Relies on Rail to Deliver Its Crude.")
—Christina Nunez
Published April 1, 2013
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Containing the Crude
Photograph by Jacob Slaton, Reuters
Emergency crews worked over the weekend to clean up the Canadian heavy crude that spilled among suburban homes in Mayflower, Arkansas. ExxonMobil deployed vacuum trucks, storage tanks, and about 120 workers, the company said in a statement. Crews also set up oil-absorbing booms at nearby Lake Conway, but no oil had reached the lake as of Monday. Resident Warren Andrews told local media that he expected it to be at least six days before he could return to his home. "It's just a sad accident. I didn't even know the oil pipeline was there," he said.
Published April 1, 2013
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Gulf-Bound Flow of Crude
Photograph by Jacob Slaton, Reuters
The oil that filled ditches and driveways in Mayflower, Arkansas is heavy crude from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, that was being transported via pipeline to Texas. An ExxonMobil spokesperson said that the company would excavate around the area of the leak to determine the cause and make repairs but could not say when or how long it would take.
The spill provided new ammunition for opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from the tar sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called the spill "a troubling reminder that oil companies still have not proven that they can safely transport Canadian tar sands oil across the United States without creating risks to our citizens and our environment." (See related interactive map: "Keystone XL: Mapping the Flow of Tar Sands Oil.")
Published April 1, 2013
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A Different Type of Oil
Photograph by Jacob Slaton, Reuters
Emergency crew workers vacuum up spilled oil and water near Interstate 40 in Mayflower, Arkansas, Sunday, after the weekend spill forced the evacuation of 22 homes.
Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the United States, sending about two million barrels per day across the border. Oil from the Alberta tar sands is a sticky, thick substance known as dilbit, or diluted bitumen, and some worry that transporting this unconventional oil is riskier than moving conventional crude. As Anthony Swift of the Natural Resources Defense Council notes in a blog post, tar sands pipelines operate at higher temperatures and may be more likely to rupture because of external corrosion.
Swift also contends that spills of tar sands oil are more damaging and harder to clean up, citing a 2010 tar sands spill into the Kalamazoo River: "Almost a billion dollars has been spent on cleanup, and 38 miles of that river are still contaminated," Swift writes. (See related photos: "Satellite Views of Canada's Tar Sands Over Time.")
Published April 1, 2013
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A Spreading Debate
Photograph by Jacob Slaton, Reuters
Vacuum trucks and emergency crews continue the attempt to suck up spilled oil after the leak in Arkansas, but the debate over how—and whether—to transport the new gushes of oil from the tar sands and the Bakken shale through the U.S. heartland will continue after the Mayflower spill is gone. Refineries in the Midwest, where the Pegasus pipeline begins, will run out of capacity to handle Canada's heavy crude within the next few years. Texas refineries, on the other hand, are well equipped to take on the supply, and the Keystone XL pipeline would transport more than 800,000 barrels per day into the United States. The pipeline awaits approval from the Obama administration. (See related story: "Keystone XL Pipeline Path Marks New Battle Line in Oklahoma.")
A National Academies of Science committee is studying whether oil from the tar sands poses a special threat to pipeline integrity during transport, and whether current federal pipeline regulations are adequate to prevent a spill like the one that happened Friday in Arkansas.
Published April 1, 2013
11 comments
Man is a fool, an idiot!! This wouldn't be happening if we had already gone completely SOLAR!! Nicolai Tesla said around a hundred years ago that we should go completely wireless and SOLAR~ no one listened to him back then and we're still not listening to him! The pipeline also runs through Tornado Alley and isn't that far from the New Madrid faultline, could be in the possible radius of an epicenter were an earthquake ever to occur there!! Just brilliant...NOT!!! This is like Japan putting in nuclear reactors in a country prone to earthquakes and tsunamis and you saw what happened there!! They weren't smart over there, and it looks like we're no smarter than they were!! Anything can happen, anything is possible! This pipeline has been put in in an area that is prone to tornadoes, they get them all the time, every year!! All we need is one tornado to come along and rip another section of this pipeline open thus causing another lethal toxic spill of tar sands crude!! This will seep into ground water and is in the air and is a major potential health risk for both humans and animals! I'm sick of the spokespeople of ExxonMobile just paying lip service to this disaster telling everyone everything is okay, not to worry etc!! This is bull****! "MONEY TALKS AND BULL**** WALKS" and we should know that anything regarding the American people and our country, literally this great land of ours is bull****to these selfish, greedy, corrupt and evil CEO's at ExxonMobile and other companies like BP and our politicians that also have their selfish greedy hands out!! WAKE UP AMERICA WE NEED TO GO SOLAR!!! DEMAND IT!!! Or we will pay a very high price for it in the end if we continue to use antiquated methods of energy like fossil fuels!!
1 Like
I hear they're hiring people off craigslist for the clean up crew. Real professional.
Oil companies can't be trusted and neither can the EPA. Say no to the keystone pipeline!!!
Resident Warren Andrews told local media that . . . "It's just a sad accident. I didn't even know the oil pipeline was there," he said. This is 'just a sad mess'??? Somehow, I think it is more like major pollution of underground water as well as that on top and a very real disaster. Everything I read indicates that those responsible for this massive spill just plain didn't care about taking care of the equipment they used to transport this vile tar/oil. No one can yet know the long-term ramifications of this 'accident'. And to top THAT off, it appears that most residents in the area didn't even know the pipeline was there! Can you say 'something smells fishy here'??? One thinks of oil spills as being near the coastlines, except in Alaska where the massive tundra is at risk, but in Arkansas, the middle of our country? OMG!
And speaking of Alaska, I believe THEY are the model of how land, animals and oil can work together in a safe way. As I understand it, the pipeline there is flown over daily at low altitudes to check for any leaks or other problems. Seems to be working well - so far, except, of course, when it reaches the end of its long trip in Valdez. Loading it onto ships with drunken captains can and did cause a major, terrible 'accident', but that has been taken care of by more restrictions on who 'drives' these ships. However, there is still oil just under the sand and rocks in and around Valdez - it will never be completely cleaned up.
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I live in Conway 8 miles from the spill and now am hearing from the workers that the spill is soon going to contaminate the water and of course our water treatment is not retrofitted to take care of this problem..... Hello government this is the time to send out your workers and call a disaster to an area and give a lil help. According to the men working on the problem, they are going to ship water in to take care of the issue, hmmm water bill going up???? I manage a restaurant here can you imagine having to cook with bottled water? And serving bottled water to every table?
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Take it personally, take ACTION!
The Homeowner's Energy Handbook, now available to show you how to get off the grid, and off the pipeline!
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Exxon should be prosecuted for putting corrosive tar sands slurry in a line that was sixty years old. They knew they were endangering the lives and health of thousands of people and animals. I think it is criminal negligence.
This photo was taken from inside one of the keystone pipeline segments near Winona, Texas. The day after these photos were made, the pipelines were buried in someones yard (which was taken by the state by eminent domain for TransCanada.) http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/shoddy-weld-on-kxl/
These are welds which are supposed to be x-rayed and have photos made as proof of quality of the welds. They have documented evidence of falsifying the data and recordings. They do the same process for I-beams for nuclear power plants, and i know of faked data there too (this, from the early 1980s). Just saying, corporations are as crooked as ever, cutting cost corners for those silly safety regulations.
There are a little over 2,100 miles of pipeline. The pipeline comes (i think) in 25 foot segments, 1 meter in diameter, with welds on the inside and outside of the pipe. There are approximately 443,000 double welded sections of pipe.
What bothers me the most is that the corporations and states thru which the pipeline runs are taking almost zero responsibility for problems, leaks, spills, explosions, health problems... Like this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/10/24/transcanada-pipelines-bison-explosion.htm
And the photos of the ExxonMobil Pegasus pipeline are harbingers of the future of Keystone
4 Like
Can you imagine living over a oil pipe line for 60 years and discovering it was there after it burst? Your first thought would be, "I am sitting on a gold mine, black gold that is. I am going to be rich! Let's move to Beverly hills packing up our belongin's with Granny,Jethro, Ellie May, and our hound, Duke!" Yahoo!
Then to be told it was already there by Exxon Oil Company and it could not be touched by you or your neighbors. Lawsuit is a comin' unless Congress passed a loop-hole that protected Oil Companies from lawsuits - Watch, Congress will soon pass a bill/law real quick to get the liability for this spill to be paid for by the people and little from the company owning the pipeline. And they want to lay the Keystone pipeline - HAHA!
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