I have gone through the Oil Sands Fact Check site and honestly all I can find is boasting as to the boon in the US economy, jobs and the fact that activists are using the pipeline and tar sands oil as a scapegoat. Not once in all the supposed facts they have there do they address the real concerns, simply twisting the facts to their advantage. Painting themselves as responsible entities. Never once addressing that this substance is way more dangerous than oil to the environment and the water, especially. The tap dance over the fact by stating that tar sands oil has been transported into the US for decades.
What they fail to miss is this: Instead of reporting the factual analysis of the toxic substances that this tar sand emits they skirt over the fact claiming their emissions testing results. Now please correct me if I am wrong , but the major concern of environmentalists and activist is not the emissions once it is in the car. In fact the concern is of the damage the unrefined substance will do to the environment and the water shed if a spill were to take place. As we can see in Arkansas the substance is so toxic that the residents are already suffering from it’s effects .
They call themselves responsible entities, so then my question is this :
what is Exxon doing to make this right?
Exxon has stated that the water quality was within safe limits.
So what exactly does that mean ?
Are we to accept the status quo with regards to safety limits just as we are to accept that GMO’s are good for us even though there are more and more opponents coming out stating that it is in fact detrimental to human health?
What about the air quality? Or does that not matter?
Children are getting sick. People are becoming ill due to the toxic conditions.
Are we to believe this is acceptable ?
Or will this also be kept from the people and the sick treated like insignificant data as the people of the gulf were?
Good health once it has been compromised cannot be replaced.
Will your tar sands oil paycheck take care of it?
There is no amount of compensation that will replace good health. Nor erase catastrophic illness.
Or does it not matter because it isn’t your family?
I am sorry to break it to you , but unless you have a crystal ball that tells you otherwise . It could very well be you and your family that suffers next! Do not delude yourself by detaching from the reality of things entertaining the belief that it won’t happen to you . I am sure the people of Mayflower , Arkansas never imagined they would now be mired in this poison. Their children getting sick and their homes surrounded, helpless waiting for some heartless oil company to decide whether the clean up is worth the expense. Not the lives of the people affected by their poison, but their bottomline.
Don’t kid yourself!
With the lack of responsibility and lack of corrective action taken by oil companies in Africa. With leaking pipelines and toxic sludge where lakes had once been. Dead soil where crops were once grown.
How can anyone in their right mind take the word of these companies as to their integrity and responsibility?
We have seen what BP did in the Gulf Of Mexico.
Do you truly consider what was done in the gulf an adequate job of cleaning up the mess made by their incompetence and lust for profits?
The sea life dying as a result and scientists complaining that they have been legally gagged from making their findings available to the public.
Restrained by whom?
The oil companies?
No restrained by the government that is supposed to be looking out for our benefit. Instead they are protecting the Oil Companies interests.
Is this the kind of safety measure you want?
The reins handed over to a company who’s haste for fattening up their bottom line poisons our earth , our air and our water so that they can police themselves?
How many journalists were kept away from the Gulf to keep them from reporting what they saw there?
How many reporters were kept from Mayflower, Arkansas for the same reason?
Everyone is crowing about the jobs the tar sands oil will bring to the US.
Are you truly understanding what you are asking for?
Do you even understand that Mayflower Arkansas could be anywhere in the heartland?
Do you realize what would happen if that pipeline leaked into the water shed.?
It would not be someone else’s problem , it would be everyone’s problem . You are looking for jobs, yes we understand. We all live here in the States and we are all going through the same hard times. We all need to work and we all need to pay our bills.
Where do we draw the line at what is admissible and what is over the not?
There is only one Earth and when she is completely trashed where will you go ?
Will your job with tars sands oil help you bring her back ?
Will you be able to remove the horrible toxins deposited by your tars sands oil from the earth,the rivers, the water?
Are you not paying attention to what is happening around you?
I want you to understand one very important thing. The responsibility for the destruction of our environment is not just on the oil companies. It is on everyone of you who don’t give it a second thought. On everyone of you that takes clean air ,and water for granted. On everyone of you that places a job over the well being of your children and your fellow American’s children. This is not a game this is a very hazardous situation that has grave consequences and until all of you realize that , we are lost.
Money has become the denominating factor in our lives.
What happened to principal , responsibility and honor.
What happened to doing what is right ?
Where is the concern for our children’s well being?
I see my fellow citizens on a collision course with destruction, hell bent on ignoring the warning signs. Their eyes on the prize of money and material things.
One wonders how much that money and those materials possessions will help when you can no longer give your child a cup of clean , safe water to drink?
On March 29, an oil pipeline running through Mayflower, Arkansas experienced a leak that resulted in the evacuation of 22 homes and immediate clean up efforts from the pipeline’s operator, ExxonMobil. According to reports, the Pegasus line was carrying Wabasca Heavy crude oil – a blend of crude produced in the Athabasca oil sands region in Alberta.
Of course, in the minds of oil sands opponents, all pipelines are made alike and are uniformly threatened by oil sands crudes. In fact, following the news of the incident, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) stated:
“This latest pipeline incident is 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.”
We have the top five reasons why that’s not the case.
1) Oil sands crudes have been transported safely in the U.S. for more than 40 years. Accident reports from the Pipeline & Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) from 2002 through mid-2012 show zero internal corrosion-related releases from pipelines carrying diluted bitumen.
2) Oil sands crudes are not more corrosive than other crude oils. In a 2011 report, Canadian research group Alberta Innovates found that acid and sulfur compounds found in oil sands crudes “are too stable to be corrosive and some may even decrease corrosion.” Recent testing and studies by ASTM International and Penspen support this conclusion.
3) Oil sands crudes are transported at comparable pipeline pressures as other heavy crude oils. All U.S. pipelines must operate under Maximum Operating Pressure limitations administered by PHMSA. In other words, pipelines are constructed to specifications that ensure they can handle the intended operating pressure and the type of liquid that flows through them.
4) Oil sands crudes are not heated for transportation in pipelines above the temperature of other crude oils. The range of temperatures for all crude oils from Canada is 40-135 degrees Fahrenheit. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Code for Pipeline Transportation Systems forLiquid Hydrocarbons and Other Liquids does not consider pipeline temperatures to be elevated unless they exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
5) Keystone XL would “have a degree of safety over any other.” As mentioned in point #3, pipelines must meet certain specifications before transporting any type of crude, no matter if it’s heavy or light. Keystone XL, which will also carry heavy oil from Alberta, is going above and beyond those requirements by adopting 57 extra safety measures, leading the State Department to declare that the project would “have a degree of safety over any other.”
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 30 (UPI) — There’s been a “toxic soup” hanging over residents in Mayflower, Ark., as a result of an Exxon Mobil oil pipeline accident, a citizen’s group said.
Exxon said about 5,000 barrels of oil was released last month from a 22-foot rupture on its Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower. The pipeline, built in the 1940s, was carrying a diluted form of Canadian crude oil, dubbed oil sands, at the time of the spill.
Air samples taken March 30, the day after the incident, indicated high levels of compounds considered harmful to human health. The samples were conducted by a student activist trained by the Faulkner County (Ark.) Citizens Advisory Group and Global Community Monitor.
“Total toxic hydrocarbons were detected at more than 88,000 parts per billion in the ambient air and present a complex airborne mixture or soup of toxic chemicals that residents may have been exposed to from the Mayflower tar sands bitumen spill,” Neil Carman, a representative from the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.
Exxon admitted to finding levels of benzene and other harmful chemicals in early samples taken at Mayflower. It said air and water quality was within safe limits in the weeks following the spill, however.
The report, published by the activist groups, said residents are showing signs of exposure to chemicals ranging from benzene, a carcinogen, to toluene, a central nervous system depressant, more than four weeks after the spill.
Roughly four weeks after the spill took place, many basic details are still unknown to the public, according to recent reporting by InsideClimate News. Questions include what exactly caused the spill, how big was the spill exactly, and how long did it take for emergency responders to react to the spill, to name a few.
But one thing is certain according to the new study: For the residents of Mayflower, quality of life has been changed forever.
All of these chemicals are hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), “regulated under the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act amendments as the most toxic of all known airborne chemicals,” as explained in the press release summarzing the study.
This deals with the high cost of Oil in more than just a monetary sense. The Destruction of the Eco System, Water shed and soil. It explores the many oils spill disasters that have occurred over the last three decades up to the most recent incident in Mayflower , Arkansas.
…………………………………...
Track used for video ” The True Cost Of Oil” La búsqueda de Ianna
Track 8/12
Album Epic Soul Factory – Volume One by Epic Soul Factory
………………………
Creative Commons
You can copy, distribute, advertise and play this track as long as you:
• Give credit to the artist
• Don’t use this album for commercial purposes
• Distribute all derivative works under the same license
…………………………………
Photos for Mayflower Arkansas captured from the work of Photojournalist Adam Randall
The full video can be seen here
All other images used include the name of the Photographer / creator. When neither was available a link to the site where the image was found was included for reference.
*************************************************************************************
FAIR USE STATEMENT
This work may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, health and social justice issues, etc. As this information is being presented in a way not made available by the copyright holder for furthering the delivery of said information to a public that would otherwise not be made aware of its content and message. Thereby, extending their reach and furthering their message we believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/…
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
On March 24, 1989, shortly after midnight, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. The spill was the largest in U.S. history and tested the abilities of local, national, and industrial organizations to prepare for, and respond to, a disaster of such magnitude. Many factors complicated the cleanup efforts following the spill. The size of the spill and its remote location, accessible only by helicopter and boat, made government and industry efforts difficult and tested existing plans for dealing with such an event.
The spill posed threats to the delicate food chain that supports Prince William Sound’s commercial fishing industry. Also in danger were ten million migratory shore birds and waterfowl, hundreds of sea otters, dozens of other species, such as harbor porpoises and sea lions, and several varieties of whales.
Since the incident occurred in open navigable waters, the U.S. Coast Guard’s On-Scene Coordinator had authority for all activities related to the cleanup effort. His first action was to immediately close the Port of Valdez to all traffic. A U.S. Coast Guard at USCG investigator, along with a representative from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, visited the scene of the incident to assess the damage. By noon on Friday, March 25, the Alaska Regional Response Team was brought together by teleconference, and the National Response Team was activated soon thereafter.
Three methods were tried in the effort to clean up the spill:
Burning
Mechanical Cleanup
Chemical Dispersants
In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which required the Coast Guard to strengthen its regulations on oil tank vessels and oil tank owners and operators. Today, tank hulls provide better protection against spills resulting from a similar accident, and communications between vessel captains and vessel traffic centers have improved to make for safer sailing.
When the Exxon Valdez ran ashore off Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, it wasn’t the first tanker to founder at sea. It was, however, the first tanker to deposit its load — 11 million gallons of crude oil, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean — in such an economically and environmentally important ecosystem, and thus squarely in the public eye.
To this day, images of oil-choked birds and oil-fouled shorelines are burned into the memories of a generation. Local and national outrage forced Exxon into paying billions of dollars to clean the mess. Some of this money went to scientists who monitored the region’s recovery. For the first time, researchers had the resources necessary to thoroughly study an oil spill’s effects. These proved even uglier than they first appeared.
Researchers expected the oil to break up in a few years. Instead, it will take more than a century. They found that oil’s compounds, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — carcinogenic molecules that attach to fat, and refuse to break down in water — are toxic at levels hundreds, even thousands of times lower than was previously believed.
The Valdez pollution set off a cascade of environmental effects that have yet to be fully understood, but have at least been measured. Few of the region’s fish, bird and marine mammal populations have recovered. To the naked eye, Prince William Sound is beautiful and wild — but beneath the surface, it is profoundly damaged. As the Exxon Valdez Oil
Spill Trustee Council recently reported, oil in many areas “is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.”
The federal economic stimulus package passed in January contains roughly $4 billion for clean water, of which $1.2 billion is earmarked for “green infrastructure” — green roofs, porous concretes, and other technologies that can at least reduce the surges that cause sewage plants to overflow.
It’s a welcome investment, said Baer, but the EPA estimates that $390 billion is needed to upgrade water systems nationwide, and Gann called the stimulus figure “a down payment” on what’s needed. Moreover, said Baer, “Global warming is going to be one more added stress on our infrastructure. Storms will be more intense, and you’re going to see more intense runoffs and overflows.”
The effects of all this oil have yet to be quantified. Unlike Prince William Sound, researchers haven’t spent decades looking for damage caused by chronic oil exposures in
America’s waters. It’s not inconceivable that a state of permanent toxicity has come to seem natural.
If oil “kills all these organisms through long-term exposures in
Prince William Sound,” said Peterson, “think what it’s doing in Boston
Harbor and San Pedro and every other place where this is going on.”
…
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Administrator Bill Reilly at the Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup site, August 1989
Exxon has not yet recovered a responsible reputation to this day, even if it has slowly introduced green energy and renewable energy resources in the market. The name Exxon, to this day, is still synonymous to the concept of man-made disaster. After all, the damage caused by the oil spill was massive and affected sea and water creatures, as well as ruined the livelihood of thousands of people dependent on fishery resources off the coast of Alaska.
After the billions of dollars spent on restoring the Exxon image, the company has failed to restore its reputation after the oil spill incident. Exxon still has one of the dirtiest company images on earth. The accident is touted to be one of the worst ways to handle a crisis. Exxon has gotten one of the most damaging portrayals in mass media, due entirely to the company’s fault of not communicating properly with the publics right after the incident.
In a time of environmental consciousness, Exxon has remained in the minds of people as a company that is environmentally damaging and irresponsible. The perception of the public is the cause behind the fact that Exxon has never survived the crisis.
To eradicate its irresponsible image, Exxon has to do the opposite: be environmentally responsible. This is a tall order to overturn public perception that has festered through two decades. While it has already put technological measures in place so as not to repeat the disaster, the issue has always been one of public image and reputation.
No matter how Exxon passed a good part of the blame after the spill to other groups such as the Coast Guard and
It can be concluded that Exxon’s long delay in responding publicly to the problems, in the many ways and means that it could have had, caused the company’s irreparable reputational damage.
To this day, the Exxon Valdez incident remains one of the most glaring examples of how not to handle a crisis.
Twenty years after the oil spill disaster on March 24, 1989 that released 10.8 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, Exxon has spent more than $2 billion in massive clean-up campaigns. However, oil still remains and some wildlife habitats will still take a long time to recover.
The Exxon Valdez incident is one of the worst environmental disasters in recent times. It is also a classic case of how a massive crisis was poorly handled. The management did not act quickly nor on time, making the damage bigger than it even was in the perception of the public.
By 1992 or so, the 37,000-ton spill in Prince William Sound had been washed (at Exxon’s expense) off the rocks and beaches, or simply weathered away. Now, 13 years after the Exxon Valdez spill, a casual observer won’t see oil.
Oil does remain in sheltered locations – immune to wind and wave – mainly on about 20 acres of rocky shore, according to an extensive 2001 survey. Although that’s a lot less than the 149 kilometers of shoreline that were heavily oiled during the spill, “In terms of critical habitat for wildlife, that is a significant amount, because there is not a large amount of suitable habitat, you have sheer rock, or rocky transition zones,” says Phil Mundy, science director of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, which administers a research and restoration program in the sound, funded by a bank-ful of Exxon settlement money.
Valdez oil moved from Prince William Sound to the Gulf of Alaska. Courtesy David Page
Totally toxic? Oil loses some of its toxic components through exposure to the weather, but the deep pockets left in the sound are still surprisingly toxic. The report from the 2001 survey said:
“Twenty subsurface pits [of 6,775 dug in Prince William Sound] were classified as heavily oiled. Oil saturated all of the interstitial spaces and was extremely repugnant. These ‘worst case’ pits exhibited an oil mixture that resembled oil encountered in 1989 a few weeks after the spill — highly odiferous, lightly weathered, and very fluid.”
Mundy finds this surprising. “If you’d asked in ’89, would we still have oil around in 2002? I’d have said it’s highly unlikely. One thing we have learned, contrary to what you find in the literature, especially in literature sponsored by the oil companies … is that oil that’s not exposed to the atmosphere … can surface time and again, to do damage at local scales.”
In general, says Robert Spies, a marine biologist and former chief scientist for the trustee council, “Oil tends to clean itself up, it’s a curve. You get rapid loss in one to two years, then the rate begins to fall off. Where there was protection from the physical energy of the ocean, it can take a long time to break down.”
Before we exonerate Exxon in the Valdez spill, let’s focus on the oil remaining under the rocks. “You can go to Prince William Sound and dig down in the rocky cobble beaches, and find oil as toxic as the day it was spilled,” says Richard Charter, a marine conservation advocate with the non-profit Environmental Defense. (Full disclosure: the author is a member of Environmental Defense.)
The 1989 picture shows pools of oil on an exposed boulder beach. In 1992, the same beach shows no oil. A combination of natural and human processes removed most of the oil by 1992. Courtesy David Page
Some studies, Charter says, show that tiny concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (a group of toxic hydrocarbons ) from crude oil cause mutations in pink salmon eggs. “That means that components of oil, the fractions with the most toxicity, have mutagenic properties at levels much lower than we thought, and are much more persistent in the food chain than we ever believed possible.”
In a report cited by a 2002 National Research Council book Oil in the Sea III), researchers from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center tried to sum up the effect of oil on pink salmon, the big commercial fish in Prince William Sound before the spill:
“Laboratory studies designed to emulate post-spill conditions in [Prince William Sound] verified that embryos are sensitive to long-term exposures to weathered oil in the low part per billion (ppb) range of PAH [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ]. Mortalities, abnormalities, histopathological damage, and other biological effects increased with embryo exposure to ppb concentrations of PAH. …Sensitivity of salmon embryos to weathered crude oil at ppb concentrations is unprecedented…”
Another indication that spilled oil does not just disappear comes from researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who found fuel oil 30 years after a spill on Cape Cod. Woods Hole couldn’t bother talking with us, but their press release said samples from 2 to 11 inches deep in the marsh “contained petroleum hydrocarbons in similar concentrations to those observed shortly after the1969 spill. … the team found that compounds consistent with No. 2 fuel oil were still present in the sediments and may remain there indefinitely.”
At approximately 11 p.m. Friday, July 1, 2011, a break occurred in a 12-inch pipeline under the Yellowstone River 20 miles upstream from Billings, Montana. The ruptured pipeline is owned by ExxonMobil Pipeline Company. According to the company, an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil entered the river before the pipeline was closed. EPA is leading the response in close coordination with the state of Montana and other federal agencies. EPA’s primary concern is protecting people’s health and the environment and will remain on-site to ensure cleanup and restoration efforts do just that. EPA continues to hold ExxonMobil, the responsible party, accountable for assessment and cleanup.
Caution was required as flood waters rise possibly endangering the 20 year old pipeline. Exxon claims to have taken this into consideration decided after consideration of t heir safety record that the pipeline would again be opened in spite of concerns to its continued integrity as flood waters rise in the Yellowstone River in Montana . Speculation is that the rupture in the pipeline was indeed caused by debris damage below the water line. One stops to wonder how these safety decisions were determined and by whom. As it is obvious Exxon’s safety record is less than satisfactory, in light of only a few of the oil leaks and spills in which it has been directly involved over the last decade or so.
Nearly a year after an Exxon Mobile pipeline leaked 60,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River, Montana environmental officials are looking for remaining contamination on the stream after workers recently spotted sheens on the water downstream from the leak site, according to a report from the Associated Press.
The July 1 accident spilled an estimated 1,500 barrels of crude, or 63,000 gallons, into the Yellowstone River near Laurel.
In recent weeks, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks workers have found sheens or other evidence of oil at several sites downstream of the spill, said agency spokesman Bob Gibson.
Department of Environmental Quality scientist Laura Alvey said that includes a sheen she saw last week on an island east of Laurel. She said there was “no question” the sheen came from oil.
Homeowner Jim Swanson had contacted the DEQ after seeing sheens along the river. His property suffered extensive contamination last year, which Exxon workers attempted to remove as part of an estimated $135 million in cleanup and pipeline repair work.
The company recovered an estimated 1 percent of the oil spilled.
The verdict stemmed from the contamination of drinking water supplied to 160 homeowners due to a gasoline leak, Bloomberg noted. The oil giant argued that the 2011 jury award was excessive. A state appeals court agreed and ordered a new trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
Additionally, the appeals court reverse the jury’s finding of fraud against Exxon Mobil. That, too, will be a question in the new trial.
The leak, which lasted 37 days, caused 26,000 gallons of gasoline to seep into groundwater in the rural Maryland community. The jury awarded residents $495 million in compensatory damages in addition to the punitive award
The dirty energy giant is hoping to withdraw up to 250,000 gallons per day of surface water from Oquaga Creek near the Farnham Road bridge crossing on Route 41 in Sanford, New York. Roughly 300 residents showed up to comment on the proposal, which has stirred public anger and concern over the potential impacts on the local environment and water supplies.
The Exxon subsidiary’s draft docket stipulates that the surface water will be used for unconventional gas drilling via hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking). XTO says the clean water will be used to mix cement and create a “drilling mud/fluid” cocktail. No waste problem, of course.
Beneath the Exxon PR spin, the true costs of withdrawing a quarter million gallons of water per day are estimated at around $17,700 - for a tiny patch of land.
Consider the fact that the fracking rush is exacting these very same direct costs on many North Americans.
Recently, ExxonMobil has continued with its misleading media blitz to pacify the public’s real concerns around the dangers of unconventional gas exploration. Exxon’s misdirection appeared this month on TV and in full-page ads [pdf] in The New York Times and Washington Post. The ads falsely presented fracking for unconventional gas as a time-tested way to unlock “cleaner-burning” fuel from shale rock. The problem with Exxon’s efforts to greenwash unconventional gas is that according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [pdf] as well as a recent Cornell study, unlocking this dirty energy is perhaps just as polluting if not moreso than coal. Unconventional gas, despite what Exxon would have us believe, is just another polluting fossil fuel.
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.
What is horizontal hydraulic fracturing?
Horizontal hydrofracking is a means of tapping shale deposits containing natural gas that were previously inaccessible by conventional drilling. Vertical hydrofracking is used to extend the life of an existing well once its productivity starts to run out, sort of a last resort. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated and must be cleaned and disposed of.
What is the Halliburton Loophole?
In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.
What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
In 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed by Congress to ensure clean drinking water free from both natural and man-made contaminates.
What is the FRAC Act?
The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a House bill intended to repeal the Halliburton Loophole and to require the natural gas industry to disclose the chemicals they use.
How deep do natural gas wells go?
The average well is up to 8,000 feet deep. The depth of drinking water aquifers is about 1,000 feet. The problems typically stem from poor cement well casings that leak natural gas as well as fracking fluid into water wells.
How much water is used during the fracking process?
Generally 1-8 million gallons of water may be used to frack a well. A well may be fracked up to 18 times.
What fluids are used in the fracking process?
For each frack, 80-300 tons of chemicals may be used. Presently, the natural gas industry does not have to disclose the chemicals used, but scientists have identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
In what form does the natural gas come out of the well?
The gas comes up wet in produced water and has to be separated from the wastewater on the surface. Only 30-50% of the water is typically recovered from a well. This wastewater can be highly toxic.
What is done with the wastewater?
Evaporators evaporate off VOCs and condensate tanks steam off VOCs, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The wastewater is then trucked to water treatment facilities.
What is a well’s potential to cause air pollution?
As the VOCs are evaporated and come into contact with diesel exhaust from trucks and generators at the well site, ground level ozone is produced. Ozone plumes can travel up to 250 miles.
The Democratic Committee staff analyzed the data provided by the companies about their practices, finding that:
The 14 leading oil and gas service companies used more than 780 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products, not including water added at the well site. Overall, the companies used more than 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 different chemicals and other components.
The components used in the hydraulic fracturing products ranged from generally harmless and common substances, such as salt and citric acid, to extremely toxic substances, such as benzene and lead. Some companies even used instant coffee and walnut hulls in their fracturing fluids.
Between 2005 and 2009, the oil and gas service companies used hydraulic fracturing products containing 29 chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for their risks to human health, or listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
The BTEX compounds – benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene – are SDWA contaminants and hazardous air pollutants. Benzene also is a known human carcinogen. The hydraulic fracturing companies injected 11.4 million gallons of products containing at least one BTEX chemical over the five-year period.
Methanol, which was used in 342 hydraulic fracturing products, was the most widely used chemical between 2005 and 2009. The substance is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the candidate list for potential regulation under SDWA. Isopropyl alcohol, 2-butoxyethanol, and ethylene glycol were the other most widely used chemicals.
Many of the hydraulic fracturing fluids contain chemical components that are listed as “proprietary” or “trade secret.” The companies used 94 million gallons of 279 products that contained at least one chemical or component that the manufacturers deemed proprietary or a trade secret. In many instances, the oil and gas service companies were unable to identify these “proprietary” chemicals, suggesting that the companies are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.
….
Weird and Frightening Effects of Fracking You May Not Know About
What happens if you’re a land owner who lives on a profitable mineral site, but doesn’t want corporations fracking on your land? Well, apparently, they will maneuver a way to frack your land anyway.
In a new report published last week, Reuters explored oil and gas companies’ nationwide land grab. The report focused on Chesapeake Energy Corporation, which has become the leader in petitioning state agencies when land owners refuse to sign over their land to fracking or oil drilling companies. In Texas, since 2005, Chesapeake had made 1,628 requests to drill on land that owners refuse to lease— nearly twice as many sought by its rival Exxon Mobil — and the state has only rejected five of them.
Chesapeake has made land-leasing one of its top priorities, controlling 15 million acres and spending more than $31 billion to acquire drilling rights. Playing the land grab game allows corporations to attain prospective drilling locations while locking out competition. With such a profitable opportunity, Chesapeake is making sure it’s getting its way by any means necessary. One employee was even caught saying on tape: “If properties don’t want to sign, if we have 90 percent secured of the well that we need, we have the power to put these people in the lease without their permission. …We can do whatever we want.”
When it comes to profit, property rights just don’t seem to matter. And a mix of money in politics, as well as a desire for profit, has weakened regulation.
“I don’t think the state should be able to take a landowner’s rights to generate a profit for a private company,” said David Conrad, an Ohio resident who opposes fracking, but will soon have a Chesapeake well under his home.
However, as Reuters reported:
In its petition, Chesapeake told regulators its proposed drilling unit could produce 4.5 million barrels of oil and 3.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas — if the plots of the 49 land owners who didn’t lease their property to Chesapeake were included.
If not, Chesapeake said, the unit would be 75 percent less productive and would miss out on an additional $71 million in revenue, according to its application. That math carried the day.
Waste-Filled Wine
If you don’t hate fracking already, what if you learned that it can affect wine? Furious? Me too.
Vineyard owners in California are growing increasingly wary of fracking as gas companies begin preliminary operations. Venoco has started exploring Monterey Shale for both oil and gas drilling. Last year, the company filed an application for drilling permits in Monterey County, according to Simon Salinas, a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors, and it already holds hundreds of thousands of acres in the formation, has drilled more than 20 wells and has invested $100 million in oil exploration.
With vineyards and farmlands covering 200,000 acres of Monterey that help make up an $8 billion agricultural business, Salinas told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Anything that can taint our water and food supply could be devastating to our economy.”
Paula Getzelman, a grape-grower in Monterey, said, “If you don’t have a good water supply, your land is worthless.”
Besides fears of contaminated water, Salinas also mentioned that when residents realize the fracking process uses millions of gallons of water that they need for their crops, they will be quite upset.
But even if these threats don’t come to fruition, residents are still concerned that fracking will have a negative effect on their marketability. After all, with cities like Napa and Sonoma not too far away, who’s going to want Monterey’s fracking wine?
Across the country, in Brooklyn, NY, a winery with similar fears about fracking in the Marcellus shale, recently hosted an anti-fracking benefit.
The potential for fracking affects Brooklyn Winery, as we source grapes for our wine from a number of vineyards in New York state and many of our wine bar’s seasonal menu items include ingredients grown on upstate farms.
Dairy Cows At Risk
Got milk? Maybe not for long. According to research from Penn State University, fracking has been found to reduce dairy production.
The university researchers set out to uncover how fracking in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region is affecting dairy farming, the state’s top agricultural sector. The researchers examined dairy cow numbers, milk production and fracking activity among various counties in Pennsylvania between 2007 and 2010. They found that counties with 150 or more Marcellus Shale wells saw a 19 percent decrease in dairy cows, while counties with no wells saw only a 1.2 percent decrease. In a similar fashion, milk production in these counties with 150 or more wells declined by an average of 18.5 percent, while counties with no wells had about a 1 percent decline.
This research seems to challenge the popular narrative that farmers use the money they receive from fracking companies through leasing their land to improve their farms. The researchers note that additional research is needed to figure out the exact cause of the decrease of dairy production. One researcher wondered whether farmers were taking the money they received from their leases and going into a new occupation, or if they are being forced out of farming due to fracking’s environmental effects or a decrease in their farm’s marketability.
Contaminated Food, Stillborn Calves and Poisoned Animals
Imagine fracking fluid seeping out of your next burger — not appetizing? It may be a reality as more and more livestock are raised near fracking sites. Hundreds of animals have already been affected after coming into contact with fracking fluid. Last year, 28 beef cattle in Pennsylvania were exposed to the fluid. Only three of the 11 calves these cattle gave birth to survived. In Louisiana a few years ago, 16 cows dropped dead after drinking fracking fluid.
As New York Governor Cuomo soon decides whether or not to frack in the state’s economically struggling areas, Rita Yelda of Food & Water Watch recently wrote a commentary urging him to consider fracking’s detrimental effects on food.
She wrote:
New York is a national leader in a variety of agricultural products, and about 25 percent of the state’s land area is used for food production. This space may end up being shared with thousands of air polluting drill rigs, and could also be affected by soil contamination from leaks, flares, explosions, fires and experimental waste disposal methods.
According to Energy Tomorrow, a site sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, of the 2,000+ wells drilled since 2008, there has been $2.8 million in direct economic benefits spending on wages, payments on capital, and taxes; $1.2 million in indirect (business-to-business) benefits; and $1.5 million in induced (business-to-consumer and consumer-to-business) benefits—per well! The regional economic impact in 2010 alone was $11.2 billion. And two million dollars was paid—per well—in federal, state, and local taxes.
With the current rhetoric around the economy, job creation, and the need to build national and state revenue, these numbers are difficult to ignore as well as what this money has brought to Pennsylvania and New York during, and since, the 2007 recession.
However, after a company asked for drilling rights to his land, Josh Fox began to research the mining process, a project that eventually developed into his controversial documentary Gasland. In one dramatic sequence in the film, drinking water from a kitchen faucet burst into flames due to its high methane content. Several residents testified that natural gas mining practices caused their subsequent health problems, as methane and a mixture of 596 chemicals used in the drilling process contaminated well water supplies. In doing so, the contamination also destroyed the homeowners’ property and resale values, rendering these residents no recourse to sell and move elsewhere.
Lower 48 States Shale Plays. Plays refers to geologic areas targeted by drilling companies. Image from here.
Now the true costs of withdrawing a quarter million gallons of water per day are estimated at around $17,700 in Maryland for a tiny patch of land. Factor in the supposed gains from leasing their land and then deduct the livestock lost. Plus the medical bills incurred later on in life for long term illnesses, lost wages, devastation of crops and / or livestock and what do these land owners get? The privilege to have these oil companies loot and pillage their land, livelihood, water and lives for gas. With , of course the knowledge and assistance of the government. All over the Nation. That isn;t even including the oils companies penchant for lying , misleading and cutting corners to increase profit at the expense of water , land , animal and human safety. Getting the picture yet ?
Spilled crude oil is seen in a drainage ditch near evacuated homes in Mayflower, Arkansas, on Sunday, March 31. An Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying Canadian crude oil ruptured on March 29 causing the evacuation of about two dozen homes. Mayflower residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company. / http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/08/us/arkansas-oil-spill/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter
Thank You Exxon: Mayflower, Arkansas’ New Oil Lake
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Exxon Mobil Corp. was found liable Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination caused by the gasoline additive MTBE, and the jury ordered the oil giant to pay $236 million to New Hampshire to clean it up.
The jurors reached their verdicts in less than 90 minutes, after sitting through nearly three months of testimony. Lawyers on both sides were stunned by the speed with which they reached the verdict on liability and even more stunned when the jurors took barely 20 minutes more to fill out the damages verdict.
Juror Dawn Booker of Pembroke told The Associated Press that all 12 felt ‘‘very, very confident about our decision.’’
Attorney General Michael Delaney said he anticipates an appeal and doesn’t expect to see the money ‘‘anytime soon.’’ He said the case and the verdict are historic.
The verdict is more than twice the $105 million jurors awarded the New York City Water District in 2009 in its case against Exxon Mobil over MTBE contamination. That case is on appeal.
Jessica Grant, the state’s lead lawyer, said it was the largest verdict ever in an MTBE case, though a financial analyst noted that the award represents about two days’ worth of profit for the company.
Jurors found that Exxon Mobil was negligent in adding MTBE to its gasoline and that it was a defective product. They also found Exxon Mobil liable for failing to warn distributors and consumers about its contaminating characteristics.
The jury determined that the hazards of using MTBE gasoline were not obvious to state officials, who opted into the reformulated gasoline program in 1991 to help reduce smog in the state’s four southernmost counties.
Jurors also rejected Exxon Mobil’s defense that more than 300 junkyard and gas station owners not named in the lawsuit were responsible for much of the contamination. They also absolved the state of responsibility for the contamination.
‘‘Exxon will probably make close to a $40 billion profit this year, Gheit said. ‘‘That’s (the award) two days’ work.’’
He said it’s no surprise that Exxon Mobil would take the 10-year-old lawsuit to trial, saying the company ‘‘will make you sweat for every dollar you think you’re going to get.’’ Company leaders view it as a matter of principle, he said.
New Hampshire filed its product liability lawsuit a decade ago against 26 oil companies and distributers, claiming that MTBE — methyl tertiary butyl ether — is a defective product because of its propensity to travel farther and faster and contaminate larger quantities of water than gasoline without additives. The state is seeking more than $700 million to test and monitor 250,000 private wells and clean up an estimated 5,600 contaminated sites, and so far has collected more than $120 million in settlement money.
Lawyers for Exxon Mobil, the only defendant that has not settled with the state, argue that MTBE did exactly what it was supposed to do — replace lead in gasoline and cut smog in compliance with the 1990 Clean Air Act. They opened their case by attempting to cast doubt on state witnesses who claimed to be surprised by memos Mickelson wrote describing environmental concerns about MTBE. Former Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Robert Varney testified earlier that he was shocked Exxon Mobil did not share Mickelson’s findings with the state, but Mickelson said the information was widely available at the time.
….
Bloomberg News
MTBE Still a Water Risk, Witness Says at ExxonMobil Trial
By Don Jeffrey and Sarah Earle on January 16, 2013
Fogg testified the additive can zigzag through fractured bedrock in unpredictable patterns and remain in groundwater longer than other compounds. Fogg said the additive poses unique risks to drinking water when leaked from underground storage tanks, based on its chemical properties and the state’s geology.
“The contaminant will tend to move along fractures that are open and connected,” he told jurors. “Those fractures can be quite complex.”
Creates Hazard
As a result, MTBE creates a hazard that is difficult to detect and equally difficult to clean up, Fogg said, showing jurors slides that demonstrated the way MTBE can bleed into water supplies. The state sought to counter claims by the oil companies that MTBE has largely disappeared from the water supply, as well as claims that the additive is safer than some of the chemicals it displaces when mixed with gasoline.
Chemicals such as benzene “don’t move very fast or very far, Fogg said. ‘‘They tend to stabilize because of biodegradation.’’
The state claimed in opening arguments that the oil companies knew that if they added MTBE to gasoline it would increase the risk and costs associated with contamination.
‘‘Exxon decided to disregard the recommendation of its own employees and put MTBE in gasoline,’’ Jessica Grant, a lawyer for the state, told jurors Jan. 14. ‘‘In 1984, Exxon anticipated that if it added MTBE to its gasoline, the number of contamination incidents would triple. These incidents would take longer to clean up and cost five times as much.’’
Dugan says Exxon Mobil delayed using MTBE as a gasoline additive to study its health and environmental impacts. He said some company executives criticized his study committee for taking so long and reducing Exxon Mobil’s competitive edge in the marketplace.
Dugan said the study committee in June 1985 recommended using MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, saying the environmental risks were manageable. He testified that the committee’s final report included concerns raised by former Exxon Mobil engineer Barbara Mickelson, including that MTBE would move farther and faster if leaked into water supplies and be more costly and difficult to remediate.
“We wanted management to be fully aware of all the concerns raised,” Dugan said.
Dugan said they rejected using methanol as being too hazardous, with as little as a teaspoonful capable of causing blindness. Ethanol was ruled out, he said, because it could cause vapor lock in car engines and some auto manufacturers were warning consumers that they would not honor warranties if the car owner used gasoline with ethanol.
The state claims MTBE is a defective product and that Exxon Mobil failed to warn state officials about potential adverse effects.
Over the state’s objections, Dugan testified Tuesday that Mickelson shared her concerns with EPA officials.
Attorney Jessica Grant, representing the state, told Superior Court Judge Peter Fauver that Exxon Mobil’s lawyers “are trying to mislead this jury into thinking they were candid with the EPA when they weren’t.” Fauver allowed defense attorney David Lender to ask whether Mickelson shared her findings with the EPA but would not permit Dugan to elaborate.
Caution was required as flood waters rise possibly endangering the 20 year old pipeline. Exxon claims to have taken this into consideration decided after consideration of t heir safety record that the pipeline would again be opened in spite of concerns to its continued integrity as flood waters rise in the Yellowstone River in Montana . Speculation is that the rupture in the pipeline was indeed caused by debris damage below the water line. One stops to wonder how these safety decisions were determined and by whom. As it is obvious Exxon’s safety record is less than satisfactory, in light of only a few of the oil leaks and spills in which it has been directly involved over the last decade or so.
The Ixtoc I exploratory well blew out in June, 1979, in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico. The well spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of oil, the second-largest spill in history.NOAA
More people + more industry = more oil floating on water At any rate, more oil will be moving across the ocean in the future, as a rising standard of living and growing population feed an overwhelming thirst for fossil fuels.
To Charter, these factors are central to the oil-spill equation. “We have been ignoring for quite a few decades the fact that oil consumption, which we take for granted in industrial societies, has an environmental cost that is paid by living resources. Things die in nature so we can get this oil. … Somewhere, some part of the environment is being poisoned for every gallon of gasoline that arrives in a filling station.”
And it’s not just tankers that spill oil, Charter adds. The largest peacetime oil spill in history, the Ixtoc I well, spewed 140 million gallons in the Gulf of Campeche, in the southern Gulf of Mexico.
That was a shallow well. As offshore drills work in the Arctic ice, and in deeper water in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, “You can create accidents you can’t fix,” says Charter.
1997
As of 1997, Fucus had not yet fully recovered in the upper intertidal zone on shores oriented towards direct sunlight, but in many locations, recovery of intertidal communities had been substantial. In other habitat types, such as estuaries and cobble beaches, many species did not show signs of recovery when they were last surveyed in 1991. Studies on the effects of clean-up activities on oiled and washed beaches showed some invertebrates, like molluscs and annelid worms were still much less abundant than on comparable unoiled beaches through 1997. It is undetermined how much recovery has occurred in these locations since 1997, because further work has not been conducted.
Lingering oil is still present in some intertidal areas within the spill zone. Recent studies indicate that at beaches with pockets of buried lingering oil, high amphipod mortality is associated with elevated hydrocarbon concentrations. Moreover, the recovery objective states that the intertidal zone must provide uncontaminated food to top predators, including human subsistence users. As recently as 2009, some bird species which rely exclusively on the intertidal zone (harlequin ducks) were still being exposed to hydrocarbons. Although the route of oil exposure has not been established, it is possible they are consuming contaminated prey during feeding. In addition, the slow recovery of some soft-sediment intertidal invertebrates, the presence of lingering, bio-available oil, the continuing oil exposure of obligate intertidal foragers that are known to eat bivalves, and the lack of recent data characterizing the intertidal community indicate that this resource has not fully recovered from the effects of the oil spill.
Taking into account what we know today and all we have seen is it a wonder that people are up in arms and extremely concerned with the prospect of the XL Pipeline. These companies have displayed nothing but contempt for the environment and the welfare of the people affected by their spills.
The Mayflower, Arkansas, spill is nothing compared to the Gulf disaster, of course. Fourteen ducks, two turtles and one muskrat were oiled as a result of the Friday spill, according to ExxonMobil. Two ducks died. About two-dozen homes were evacuated. The full toll of the Gulf Coast Oil Disaster (the news media started calling it that because “spill” wasn’t big enough to be accurate) is still being tabulated, but the numbers are of another magnitude: 210 million gallons of oil, as well as 464 oiled sea turtles and 8,567 affected birds, many of them dead, according to an April 2012 report compiled by two federal agencies and five states.
Both incidents, however, are pieces in a bigger puzzle.
They highlight, once again, that America is addicted to fossil fuels and needs to invest more seriously and urgently in alternatives like wind, solar and nuclear.
These events never seem to really stick in our collective memory.
But they should
If they did, they would inform our decision-making.
The way things work now, oil spills are seen by some politicians as expected — as externalities of our condition, like lung cancer to a smoker.
U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, reportedly told a local radio station on Wednesday that we have oil pipeline accidents “just like we have car accidents” and that he supports further development of the system that caused the spill in his state.
How silly, right?
Rivers of oil in Arkansas town
Imagine this much oil in your driveway
We shouldn’t expect oil spills to be part of modern reality.
There are much better ways forward.
Environmental groups are right to use the Arkansas spill as a cautionary tale — as one of many reasons that the Obama administration should reject a proposed pipeline, called the Keystone XL, which would carry this risky type of crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States for processing.
The groups contend this thicker “oil sands” material is more corrosive to pipelines and therefore more dangerous to transport across the United States.
The National Resource Defense Council, in a recent blog post, says oil sands crude also is transported at higher temperatures, putting additional stress on pipelines; and it’s thicker and harder to clean up than conventional crude.
….
It is truly sad that the collective memory for disasters that destroy live s and eco system is barely a tear at most two. Politicians have an even shorter memory span as they will turn around and justify the risks of a mess such as this by comparing it to an auto accident. Since when does an auto accident take decades to clean up . Since when does an auto accident devastate entire eco systems. Families , yes , individual lives yes. However , it is disingenuous at best and a downright lie to claim that transporting this filthy tar sand can be compared to something as common place as driving a car.
For all their big talk about pollution and climate change, I am hard pressed to believe that any of the rhetoric being spewed has much of anything to do with pollution or the impact o the planet. Rather it has more to do with the ability to impose more taxes, provide more special interest opportunities to lobbyists of the Energy Companies and of course fill their own money hungry never ending need for more. More power, more money , more clout , more connections to make that money once time is up on the Hill.
What is it about Americans today ?
Why are we asleep at the helm?
Why do we care so little until it affects us in our own back yard?
Do we not understand that the idea of “Drill baby , drill” has consequences?
What is it about weaning ourselves off of fossil fuel that escapes us ?
Exactly what is it going to take to make us wake the hell up and understand that we are poisoning our world, our children and ourselves!!
I understand why it is in the best interest of the politicians to look the other way. They have lost of money to make if they help these criminals get away with their plans.
But what’s in it for you ?
What do you get out of looking the other way?
How much money do you stand t make?
But more importantly …..if you do nothing and continue towing the line and following the lead of the enablers. What do you stand t o lose? One wonders how many have reflected on that thought , honestly and thoroughly.
The most frustrating aspect of all of t his is that you are assisting the enablers by unlocking the doors to your homes so t hat they can lead the thieves in to steal from you .
Does that make any kind of sense to any of you who have taken the we need oil at all costs approach?
Are you starting to get just how you and yours will be paying for this oil addiction we suffer from?
Aside fro those who actually stand to make money off of the oil sales what do you get from it ?
Convenience?
Not having to deal with new technology or having to pay for it ?
I have no idea what is going through those heads. I cannot even fathom the rationalization that might be taking place. But in case you missed it let me break it down for you ……
The Oil companies could care less about you , your children , your land or your water. All they care about is the loads of money they stand to make by selling you the oil they polluted you land and water and poisoned your children to obtain
The politicians claim they care but in actuality the only thing they care about is keeping their benefactors in the oil companies happy so they can continue making all that money and ensuring their future posts in the oil companies when they retire from public service. All thanks to t heir having helped poison your land your water and your children.
And please spare me the speech about the politicians being on the take personal speculation on my part. Because the only thing i need do is remind you that it was Bush/Cheney who gave Halliburton and every other oil company on the face of this earth the green light to be able to peddle their poisons with impunity. Just like it was Obama who gave Big Pharma the green light to peddle their poisons with impunity.
When a company that holds their money more dear than their responsibility to the communities where they function and thereby the people who live in those communities. One cannot with a clear conscience believe nor expect that said company will do the right thing. They can be and will be expected to do what is best for their bottom line , but not much else. Truly the way I see it this country is headed for a precipice that opens up over a dark and deep abyss and most f us will fall in never to be seen from or heard from again.
My question is will the rest of us allow ourselves to be sucked in after them?
Or are we going to stand up for what is right , what is just and fight back?
To Add insult to injury we have this little jewel……
Crews work to clean up from an oil pipeline spill in a Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood Wednesday, April 3, 2013. An ExxonMobil pipeline ruptured last week and spewed thousands of barrels of crude oil. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)
The ExxonMobil Corp. has been honored with a “Green Cross of Safety” medal, bestowed as the oil giant was cleaning up thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian oil spilled by a pipeline rupture onto the streets and backyards of a small town in Arkansas.
ExxonMobil was hit with a $5 million lawsuit Monday by residents of Mayflower, Ark., who said in their filing: “This Arkansas class action lawsuit involves the worst crude oil and tar sands spill in Arkansas history.” The suit estimates that up to 20,000 barrels spilled: ExxonMobil has estimated the spill at 3,500 to 5,000 barrels.
Rex Tillerson, Chairman/CEO of ExxonMobil, accepts “Green Cross of Safety” medal while crews from the oil company clean up a pipeline spill in Arkansas.
The mess in Arkansas didn’t stop ExxonMobil Chairman/CEO Rex W. Tillertson from accepting accolades from the National Safety Council. “It is an honor to receive this medal on behalf of the men and women of ExxonMobil,” said a proud Tillertson. “We hold this award in high esteem because it recognizes the deep commitment of our company and our people to a culture of safety.”
ExxonMobil is a sensitive oil giant. It waged a 15-year battle against a $5 billion punitive damages award from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, eventually reducing the award to $500 million. Lawyers from the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny & Myers argued at a federal appellate court hearing in Seattle that Exxon had suffered enough and paid out enough already.
The National Safety Council, on whose board sits an ExxonMobil vice president, commended the oil giant for its “leadership and comprehensive commitment to safety excellence. In bestowing the Green Cross of Safety, it said:
“ExxonMobil distinguished itself over a period of years for outstanding achievements in workplace safety, community service, environmental stewardship and responsible citizenship.”
The recent Arkansas rupture, a 2-3″ gash in the 65-year-old Pegasus Pipeline, hit a town of 2,200 about 20 miles north of Little Rock. It forced evacuation of homes. ExxonMobil put a lid — literally — on news coverage. A no-fly zone was established over the spill. Journalists were barred from the school where ExxonMobil and state officials were meeting with local residents.
A ruptured hose at an Alaska well on Tuesday sprayed about two-thirds of an acre of snow-covered tundra and forced Spanish oil firm Repsol to halt exploration tests briefly at the North Slope prospect, state environmental officials said.
The early morning spill, of about 6,600 gallons of crude oil, produced-water and other fluids, occurred during a flow-back test at the exploration well, one of three Repsol drilled this winter on the North Slope, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said.
Cleanup workers were dispatched, and Repsol is working on replacement and repairs necessary to resume operations, said Tom DeRuyter, the department’s on-scene response coordinator. “They right now are putting together a restart plan,” DeRuyter said.
The Peruvian government has declared an environmental state of emergency after finding elevated levels of lead, barium, and chromium in the Pastaza River in the Amazon jungle, reports the Associated Press. Indigenous peoples in the area have been complaining for decades of widespread contamination from oil drilling, but this is the first time the Peruvian government has acknowledged their concerns. Currently 84 percent of the Peruvian Amazon is covered by potential oil blocs, leading to conflict with indigenous people and environmental degradation.
The Peruvian Environment Minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, said that Pluspetrol, which has operated the oil bloc in question—1 AB—since 2001, would be liable for cleaning up the pollution. But the minister also noted that Occidental Petroleum, which operated the bloc from 1971-2001, had not been environmentally responsible in its operations either.
The news comes shortly after Peru set forth its first environmental standards for soil pollution, which the government claims is what led to the announcement of the state of emergency. For the first time Peruvian experts had standards by which to measure contamination in the Pastaza River bed.
Pluspetrol now has 90 days to clean up the Pastaza River and mitigate risk to the local Quichua and Ashuar peoples.
Peru has 659,937 square kilometers of its Amazon rainforest (84 percent) under actual and potential oil and gas development, an area larger than Afghanistan. Not surprisingly—given the scale—many of the oil blocs cover indigenous lands and protected areas. Such concessions not only imperil indigenous groups and the forest itself, but also many tribes that live in voluntary isolation who are especially susceptible to disease.
Meanwhile oil companies are complaining that Peru’s regulatory process is stifling the development of the country’s oil fields. Dow Jones Newswires reports that 16 oil companies have come together to lobby the Peruvian government on increasing oil production.
In 2009 conflict between oil development and indigenous rights erupted in violence. A clash between protestors and government police lead to the deaths of 23 police officers and at 10 indigenous protestors. Indigenous groups have since accused the government police of hiding protesters bodies in order to hide the scale of the violence.
…..
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
WakingTimes.com is an independent news blog for people interested in natural health, living with awareness and elevating their consciousness. We author and aggregate mind-opening articles, editorials and videos that inspire our readers and liberate them from the status quo.
It’s been labeled the worst environmental disaster in world history, and rightfully so, because the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is like the nightmarish gift that keeps on giving. BP and the United States government would have the public believe that all is well in the Gulf. Nothing could be further from the truth. The crisis is not only ongoing; its effects are worsening
The April 20, 2010 the Deep Water Horizon Explosion will be back in the news again. The explosion of this oil rig represents the biggest false flag event in history; the devastation of this false flag event is still being felt and the worst is yet to come. You may have heard about the explosions near the New Madrid Fault and the thousands of generators being shipped to Louisiana by FEMA. Soon all readers of this series will connect the BP oil spill to these recent current events.
Over 34 months later, the oil spill has destroyed the welfare, livelihoods, health and futures of tens of millions of Gulf Coast residents, not to mention the destruction of the fragile ecology in the Gulf of Mexico.
Originally, BP was ordered to initiate $20 billion in restitution to the Gulf Coast victims. In retrospect, BP has never made full restitution to the victims. The overall physical health of the region has been decimated and the mainstream media and government officials reaching as high as President Obama have been complicit in covering up the geological and medical magnitude of the event. Even to this day, BP is still covertly carpet bombing Corexit in the Gulf and the much of the environmental catastrophe remains untouched by the BP cleanup crews.
This new series will expose the fact that BP, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Transocean and David Rockefeller’s and the Queen of England’s New York City for Profit members had foreknowledge and hedged their stock market bets in anticipation of the event. In other words, I will present incontrovertible evidence that this event was planned in order to achieve multiple goals in order to further agenda of certain special interests. Further, this series will also expose the fact that the evidence complied from the Executive Filings of President Obama indicates that it is likely that he had foreknowledge of the impending catastrophe in the Gulf. Additionally, this series will demonstrate that the events in the Gulf are part of a regional depopulation scheme. Readers will also learn that the ongoing nature of this false flag event will contribute to the total transition of the American economy to a cap-and-trade system which has been championed by Obama and Valerie Jarrett, from several years ago, which culminated in Obama, a supposed outsider, capturing the Presidency with very little political experience.
Starting at the beginning, it was clear that BP was going to be used as the symbolic fall guy in order to usher a new set of dynamics to the Gulf. However, the powers that be provided BP with a “soft landing” with regard to the potential punitive actions brought against BP.
Every story has a beginning, so let’s review how, what will prove to be the biggest false flag event in the history of our country, unfolded.
Destitution Rather Than Restitution
You remember Ken Feinberg, don’t you? This is the same Ken Feinberg who was in charge of denying medical coverage to 9/11 first responders, which resulted in the premature deaths of many of 9/11′s first responders because of the lack of sufficient medical treatment from claims denied by him. As you read the following paragraphs, you will be shocked as to how history has been allowed to repeat itself.
BP has shamelessly used the event to falsely promote its generosity toward the residents of the Gulf by providing full restitution for tiny minority of residents, thus restoring its public image in the mind of the average American couch potato who believes everything they see on television.
Following the Gulf oil spill, there was a collective mainstream media frenzy which focused on how well BP was responding to the crisis. This was accompanied by BP’s incessant public service announcements in which the oil giant would feature one of their “average” employees professing to being a “local” in which they vowed, on behalf of BP, “to not leave until we make it right.”
All Is Well, Go Back To Sleep American Sheep
Is all well in the Gulf today? After 34 months, did BP make it right? There are two answers to this question, no and hell no! According to BP’s YouTube channel, BP has made complete restitution to the victims of the oil spill and all is indeed well and the American public should be willing to move on to other issues and forget about the Gulf.
BP’s YouTube video channel does make a compelling case that the Gulf is well on its way to a full recovery. Bryan and Brooke Zar, the owners of Restaurant des Families located in Crown Point Louisiana, claim that BP restored their restaurant to a level of profitability just in time for the 2011 spring break vacation period and that “the beaches are again clean”.
An example of BP’s YouTube channel propaganda featured Rick Scali as he describes his return to profitability as his vacation rental home business in Destin, Florida had fallen upon tough times as a result of the oil spill. Scali claims that BP made his rental business whole when he showed BP the rental cancellation slips and was promptly paid for his losses by BP and today all, is again, well. There you have it, all is well on the Gulf Coast Front, or that is what BP, the mainstream media and the government would have the public believe.
The Coverup
Despite the voluminous coverage of the oil spill by the mainstream media, the range of coverage was actually quite narrow. The Coast Guard promptly established no fly zones over much of the impacted beach areas and the oil spill area itself. Reporters were restricted to what they could cover in the beach areas and were threatened with arrest if they strayed into “forbidden zones.” This prompted an on-air emotional tirade regarding the undue restrictions on media’s coverage by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Nor was there any meaningful coverage of Halliburton applying the highly controversial dispersants of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527. However, there was plenty of media coverage of President Obama walking the beaches and eating the local shrimp in a thinly veiled effort on the part of the government and BP in promoting the notion that all is well.
http://www.nwf.org/oilspill – National Wildlife Federation’s Senior Scientist Doug Inkley discusses the concerns scientists have about the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
An estimated 1.8 million gallons of Corexit were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in an attempt to displace the 206 million gallons of oil that spewed from a broken wellhead on the Gulf floor.
Oil Spill Eater International (OSEI), through the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference group, issued a press release this week saying that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) effectively blocked or otherwise delayed scientific advancement in the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster by refusing to acknowledge the toxicity of the oil dispersant Corexit.
According to OSEI, the EPA is guilty of violations to the Clean Water Act because they knowingly used the toxic dispersant instead of opting for cleaner, less toxic methods of oil spill cleanup.
OSEI is actually not off base with their accusations. Reports from late 2012 revealed that using oil dispersants like Corexit make oil spills less visible, but when combined with the oil, create a mixture that is 52 times more toxic than the oil itself. The studies revealed that even in small amounts, the combination of oil and Corexit reduced the number of egg hatchings in small marine invertebrates by 50 percent. These are small creatures like krill, shrimp and other crustaceans that form the bottom of the oceanic food pyramid.
Those results were just from small doses of the mixture. And as I wrote in 2011, the amount of Corexit dumped into the Gulf was anything but “small”:
An estimated 1.8 million gallons of Corexit were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in an attempt to displace the 206 million gallons of oil that spewed from a broken wellhead on the Gulf floor. And while the dispersant itself was ruled to be less toxic than the oil, the study suggests that the combination mixture of crude oil and dispersant poses a significantly greater threat to both the environment and marine life than either substance on its own. The EPA says that studies have been done on some of the 57 chemical agents found in dispersants, but they also acknowledge that no long-term studies have been conducted on the exposure to these chemicals in quantities as large as were poured into the Gulf.
As for the EPA’s role and knowledge of the dangers of Corexit, that was also known as far back as 2011:
More than seventy oil workers have been evacuated from a rig in the North Sea after a leak. The North Sea platform Cormorant Alpha was partially evacuated on Saturday morning after a leak was found in one of the legs – the second incident this year. The rig has been shut down as a precaution while TAQA, who own and operate the platform, investigate the cause of the leak. A spokesman for TAQA Bratani said: “TAQA Bratani can confirm that a hydrocarbon release detected in one of the Cormorant Alpha platform legs has now been contained, with no further hydrocarbon release. “The downman of 71 non-essential personnel has been completed through normal crew-change flights. Everyone is safe and well. “The hydrocarbons discovered at 9.40am today have now been flushed through with sea water. “All pipeline infrastructure remains shut down as a precaution. “Hydrocarbons were discovered during maintenance work and remedial action has already commenced to contain the release. The leak has been contained within the leg and no hydrocarbons have been released into the environment.” A total of 74 personnel have remained on board the rig.
An oil leak at a North Sea platform caused it to be partially evacuated on Saturday, its Middle East operator said, the second such incident at the installation in less than two months. The Alpha Cormorant platform and the pipeline system it services were shut down as a precaution, operator Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) said in a statement. The company said it had evacuated 71 of its 145 non-essential staff from the platform, situated 160 kilometres northeast of Lerwick on the Shetland Islands north of Britain, and that everyone was safe and well. “TAQA Bratani can confirm that a hydrocarbon release detected in one of the Cormorant Alpha platform legs has now been contained, with no further hydrocarbon release,” the company said. “TAQA continues to monitor the situation on Cormorant Alpha and is working with its partners to have the Brent pipeline system operational as soon as possible.” The leak was discovered during maintenance work at 0940 GMT on Saturday morning, TAQA said. The company said no oil was released into the environment during the leak. A similar leak occurred at the platform on January 15, also causing the shutdown of the platform and the pipeline infrastructure. Cormorant Alpha, which was built in 1978, handles about 90,000 barrels per day of crude oil, of which 42,600 are produced by TAQA.
…
Second leak at Cormorant Alpha platform
The Cormorant Alpha platform was also evacuated on 15 January
A North Sea oil platform has been partially evacuated for the second time this year after another oil leak was detected.
The Cormorant Alpha platform and its pipeline infrastructure were shut down after the leak was found in one of its legs during a routine inspection at 09:40.
About 70 of the 145 staff on board have been removed from the platform.
A similar leak was discovered on 15 January.
A spokesman for TAQA Bratani, which operates the platform, said no oil had been released into the sea.
He confirmed: “Hydrocarbons were discovered during maintenance work and remedial action has already commenced to contain the release.
“Hydrocarbon levels are being monitored and the platform and all pipeline infrastructure has been shut down as a precaution.
“The leak has been contained within the leg and no hydrocarbons have been released into the environment.”
State Department Urged to Declare Keystone Not in National Interest
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration today took the next potential step toward approval of the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, despite the heavy toll the pipeline and its oil will take on the climate crisis, wildlife and the environment. Some 50,000 people protested outside the White House last month in opposition to the pipeline. Today’s announcement came in the form of a supplemental environmental impact statement on Keystone XL.
“If President Obama is serious about confronting the deepening climate crisis, he needs to take Keystone XL off the table,” said Bill Snape of the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s simply no way to be in favor of this dirty, dangerous project and still think we’re going to avert climate catastrophe. The State Department should acknowledge the truth and declare this climate-killing pipeline to be not in the national interest.”
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would, every day, carry up to 35 million gallons of oil strip-mined from Canada’s “tar sands” – some of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The pipeline would cross the heart of the Midwest and deliver oil to the Gulf of Mexico, where most of it would exported to other countries. Along the way, the pipeline would cut through rivers, streams and prime wildlife habitat, including habitat for at least 20 imperiled species such as the whooping crane and pallid sturgeon.
Strip mining of oil from Alberta’s tar sands is also destroying tens of thousands of acres of boreal forest and polluting hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Athabasca River, in the process creating toxic ponds so large they can be seen from space.
Extraction and refinement of tar-sands oil produces two times more greenhouse gases per barrel than conventional oil and represents a massive new source of fossil fuels that leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has called “game over” for our ability to avoid a climate catastrophe.
TransCanada’s existing Keystone I tar sands pipeline has reportedly leaked 14 times since it went into operation in June 2010, including one spill of 24,000 gallons. The State Department’s environmental reviews have pointed out that spills from Keystone XL are likely to occur, estimating that there could be as many as about 100 spills over the course of the pipeline’s lifespan.
“Oil spills, environmental damage, wildlife put in harm’s way, a doubling-down on the climate crisis: It’s hard to understand why the Obama government is even considering this project,” said Snape.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
AP | By By MATTHEW DALY Posted: 03/02/2013 3:23 am EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new State Department report is the latest evidence that the long-delayed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be approved, supporters say.
The draft report, issued Friday, finds there would be no significant environmental impact to most resources along the proposed route from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The report also said other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries are worse for climate change.
The new report “again makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. After four years of what he called “needless delays,” Boehner said it is time for President Barack Obama “to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline.”
Environmentalists see the State Department report in a vastly different light.
They say it was inadequate and failed to account for climate risks posed by the pipeline. The report also is based on a false premise, opponents say — namely, that tar sands in western Canada will be developed for oil production regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is approved.
“Americans are already suffering from the consequences of global warming, from more powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy to drought conditions currently devastating the Midwest and Southwest,” said Daniel Gatti of the group Environment America. Production of oil from Canadian tar sands could add as much as 240 billion metric tons of global warming pollution to the atmosphere, Gatti said, a potential catastrophe that would hasten the arrival of the worst effects of global warming.
Gatti and other opponents said development of the vast tar sands is far from certain, despite assurances by the project’s supporters.
[94] Jail Torturers Not Whistleblowers, Oceans: Humanity’s Landfill, War on Terror Killed Liberty
Published on Jan 31, 2013
Abby Martin Breaks the Set on Whistleblower John Kiriakou’s Fight for Truth, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and Post 9/11 Culture of Fear.
LIKE Breaking the Set @ http://fb.me/BreakingTheSet
FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin
EPISODE BREAKDOWN: On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin talks to former CIA official, and torture whistleblower, John Kiriakou, about his prison sentence and Obama’s war on whistleblowers. Abby then takes a look at America’s #1 product, trash, and US’ contribution the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. BTS wraps up the show with a discussion with Media Roots journalist, Robbie Martin, about the gradual deterioration of civil liberties in the US and its relevance to past times of war.
New audio from the President shameless supports the unregulated and unelected body of the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently, the outlandish regulations create jobs…?
democracynow.org — Last week, President Obama’s called the United States “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas” in a speech about boosting domestic energy production. That concerns Wyoming farmer John Fenton, who already has more than two dozen gas wells on his property. The Environmental Protection Agency ruled in December that water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, was a result natural gas extraction and the controversial technique known as fracking. “Things changed pretty rapidly,” Fenton says, after fracking took place on his land near Pavillion, and now has to ship in water for drinking. “It didn’t take long to notice a significant impacts to the water, the change to smell like diesel fuel, methane was bubbling in the water. We had neighbors that actually had livestock die from drinking the water and we also saw really huge impacts to our way of life. The farm fields are full of wellheads now that we have to work around. We have people coming and going off our property 24 hours a day, and we’ve seen over a 50 percent devaluation in the value of our land.” We also speak with filmmaker Josh Fox, who was arrested for attempting to recording a Congressional hearing over the EPA report on Pavillion. Fox is producing a sequel to his award-winning film, “Gaslands,” about the impact of fracking across the United States.
Clean water is it ? Seems like the usual duplicitous ” DO as I say and Not as I do” BS to me. So much for Change we can believe in , huh ?
…
Steve Horn On Obama’s EPA Censoring A Damning Fracking Report
Steve Horn from DeSmogBlog discusses how President Obama’s EPA censored a damning scientific study on hydro-fracking.
…
Seems to me like a whole lot of wishful thinking and mud slinging going on to cover up the fact that both sides stand for the same damn agenda! Can anyone say Psy Ops ???
…
Stop Obama’s War on Fracking — WRAG PAC for Mahoning Valley Energy
The Obama Administration and the EPA have waged war on domestic energy for too long. Obama has already destroyed the coal industry, and he is out to prevent fracking at every turn. Do not support the anti-energy president this fall, vote for the pro-energy candidates who will support energy jobs in the Valley and abroad.
Every day, we use materials from the earth without thinking, for free. But what if we had to pay for their true value: would it make us more careful about what we use and what we waste? Think of Pavan Sukhdev as nature’s banker — assessing the value of the Earth’s assets. Eye-opening charts will make you think differently about the cost of air, water, trees. teebweb.org
TED Talk at TED Global 2011 – Filmed July 2011
![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
A duck from Mayflower is washed at The HAWK Center, a wildlife rehabilitation center. / 
