The Exxon Pegasus Tar Sands Spill

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As potential oil spills go, this one is relatively small, but it’s a harbinger of things to come if the Keystone XL project is approved: Everything You Need to Know About the Exxon Pegasus Tar Sands Spill.

In Greek legend, every time the winged horse Pegasus struck his hoof to the Earth, an “inspiring spring burst forth.” Unfortunately for residents in Mayflower, Arkansas, when the Pegasus pipeline ruptured, the only thing bursting forth was a nasty tar sands oil spill.

On Friday afternoon, the Pegasus pipeline operated by Exxon Mobil ruptured, flooding an Arkansas neighborhood with thousands of barrels of Wabasca Heavy crude from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta.

Here’s what you need to know about the spill, with links to some reporting on this awful event, which at very least ruined the holiday weekends of many Mayflower, Arkansas residents, many of whom didn’t even know the pipeline was running through their neighborhood.

Read the whole thing…

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27 comments
1 Iwouldprefernotto  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:39:20pm

Oil pipeline underground, what could possible go wrong?

2 Kragar  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:43:10pm

“Come on guys, what are the odds of this happening again?”

3 Kragar  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:50:00pm

Exxon’s Duck-Killing Pipeline Won’t Pay Taxes To Oil Spill Cleanup Fund

A technicality has spared Exxon from having to pay any money into the fund that will be covering most of the clean up costs of its Arkansas pipeline spill.

A 1980 law ensures that diluted bitumen is not classified as oil, and companies transporting it in pipelines do not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Other conventional crude producers pay 8 cents a barrel to ensure the fund has resources to help clean up some of the 54,000 barrels of pipeline oil that spilled 364 times last year.

As Oil Change International said in a statement today:

“The great irony of this tragic spill in Arkansas is that the transport of tar sands oil through pipelines in the US is exempt from payments into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Exxon, like all companies shipping toxic tar sands, doesn’t have to pay into the fund that will cover most of the clean up costs for the pipeline’s inevitable spills.”

4 engineer cat  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:50:08pm

Consider The Advantages Of Landscaping In Tar!!

arkasas hideaways now available at attractive prices

5 Patricia Kayden  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:53:10pm

Horrific. Hope President Obama doesn’t approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada.

6 jaunte  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 5:54:03pm

Why Won’t Exxon Come Clean on the Arkansas Oil Spill Details?

UPDATE: Apparently Exxon is using Craigslist to hire cleanup workers. “Need 40 HR Hazmat trained laborers. Emergency cleanup of oil,” requests this ad posted on the Little Rock site on Monday morning.
…………….
Meanwhile, an eagle-eyed tipster points out to Mother Jones that the company that provided the fuzzy map of where the oil spilled posted on the response site is the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, or CTEH, a contractor that has been criticized in the past for using bad data and a “long pattern of tainted results” in its environmental analysis. Based in Little Rock, the company also contracted with BP to test workers during the Gulf spill, prompting others in the field to complain that the company’s results were often skewed to favor whatever company had hired them. “They’re paid to say everything’s OK,” a toxicologist told Greenwire at the time.

7 Stanley Sea  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:01:08pm

re: #2 Kragar

“Come on guys, what are the odds of this happening again?”

The new pipeline will be 10x

8 Stanley Sea  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:02:09pm

Bummer for them. Bummer for AK.

9 BongCrodny  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:02:53pm

re: #5 Patricia Kayden

Horrific. Hope President Obama doesn’t approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada.

Unfortunately, it looks like his successor will.

I’ll vote for Hillary because of the screaming fear I have of what could happen if a nutsack like RAND PAUL gets in, but it’s pretty close to being a deal-breaker for me.

10 Stanley Sea  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:04:06pm

Heard story on NPR about how this fucks up the pipeline talking points.

Yeah?

11 Varek Raith  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:09:17pm
UPDATE: Apparently Exxon is using Craigslist to hire cleanup workers. “Need 40 HR Hazmat trained laborers. Emergency cleanup of oil,” requests this ad posted on the Little Rock site on Monday morning.

This is why I never trusted corporations in general.

12 Dancing along the light of day  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:09:20pm

OK, so I need a new doctor, due to a move.
Why do they all list every other language than English?
DO they speak it? seriously, I am not trying to be bigoted, but is English assumed?

13 jaunte  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:10:18pm

re: #1 Iwouldprefernotto

Oil pipeline underground, what could possible go wrong?

I understood from one news report that this particular pipeline was over 60 years old, only 2 feet underground. It seems to be the common practice to let them age until they break and spill.

14 Glenn Beck's Grand Unifying Theory of Obdicut  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:11:09pm

re: #12 Dancing along the light of day

Yeah, generally they don’t list it because it’s assumed. I think you have to take the boards and stuff in English.

15 kirkspencer  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:14:27pm

re: #13 jaunte

I understood from one news report that this particular pipeline was over 60 years old, only 2 feet underground. It seems to be the common practice to let them age until they break and spill.

That’s actually one of the major infrastructure issues most people don’t know. Most of our major oil and natural gas transport system should be replaced.

I’m guessing we’re going to see more and more leaks in unfortunate places over the next few years, with a handful of catastrophes required before we actually spend money to fix them. (And then everyone will complain at the cost of doing it all at once.)

16 jaunte  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:17:20pm

Pro-pipeline commentary at an NPR site from Tara EC, who appears to be a pr representative from the industry. After 11 days, she’s getting a little spammy.

Image: Screen-Shot-2013-04-02-at-8.15.jpg

stateimpact.npr.org

17 darthstar  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:34:55pm

Free oil!

But don’t eat the carrots from that garden.

18 Destro  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:35:25pm

Yea, what I want to know is will these people in Arkansas vote “drill baby drill” Republicans after this or wake up?

19 blueraven  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:41:09pm

OT: Looks like Mark Sanford won the SC GOP primary run-off election and is set to run against Elizabeth Colbert Busch for the congressional seat next month.

Should be interesting!

20 AlexRogan  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:44:15pm

re: #19 blueraven

OT: Looks like Mark Sanford won the SC GOP primary run-off election and is set to run against Elizabeth Colbert Busch for the congressional seat next month.

Should be interesting!

Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford?

Good grief…

21 Stanley Sea  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:48:13pm

re: #20 AlexRogan

Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford?

Good grief…

Against Stephen Colbert’s sis. Who was the banned lizard who never failingly envoked American Idol politics? Cato?

22 jaunte  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:50:05pm

re: #20 AlexRogan

Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford?

Good grief…

The governor whose whereabouts were unknown to his security detail for six days.

23 Interesting Times  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:52:42pm

re: #21 Stanley Sea

Against Stephen Colbert’s sis. Who was the banned lizard who never failingly envoked American Idol politics? Cato?

No, that was now-turned-stalker albusteve.

24 BongCrodny  Tue, Apr 2, 2013 6:53:37pm

re: #17 darthstar

Free oil!

But don’t eat the carrots from that garden.

But maybe they’re Gilligan carrots, which will give all of us super-powers!

25 lawhawk  Wed, Apr 3, 2013 7:54:51am

The AR oil spill shows what happens when infrastructure is allowed to rot and fail - and that the companies have made a cost-benefit analysis that they’d rather them fail and fix individual sections than require the more costly rebuilding to modern standards.

But it also means that spills can occur anywhere along the line and damage the local ecosystems pretty badly. This is a relatively small spill, but one that has chased local homeowners from their homes and damaged their property pretty thoroughly.

It can contaminate local water sources, and make homes uninhabitable and increase risk of illness.

Keystone may be built to modern standards, which reduce risks, but it’s not risk free, and the tar sands petroleum product is of a kind that makes pipeline failures more likely and cleanup more difficult.

26 Destro  Wed, Apr 3, 2013 9:12:31am

re: #25 lawhawk

The AR oil spill shows what happens when infrastructure is allowed to rot and fail - and that the companies have made a cost-benefit analysis that they’d rather them fail and fix individual sections than require the more costly rebuilding to modern standards.

But it also means that spills can occur anywhere along the line and damage the local ecosystems pretty badly. This is a relatively small spill, but one that has chased local homeowners from their homes and damaged their property pretty thoroughly.

It can contaminate local water sources, and make homes uninhabitable and increase risk of illness.

Keystone may be built to modern standards, which reduce risks, but it’s not risk free, and the tar sands petroleum product is of a kind that makes pipeline failures more likely and cleanup more difficult.

Also, they don’t want to do double walled pipes because of the cost. The oil companies had to be forced to switch to double hulled tankers by law because the bottom line indicated it was cheaper to build single hulled oil tankers.

27 Wargala  Wed, Apr 3, 2013 9:50:04am

I love how people talk about how we need to be energy independent, but then oppose any oil pipelines across the board. It shows hypocrisy at it’s highest form.

That being said, Exxon, and any other company that has disasters like this should not be exempt from any damage that their lines caused. That means that this needs to be cleaned up and the residents compensated accordingly. If that means that they can’t live there anymore, then Exxon should buy the residents new homes elsewhere.


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