6 Things You Need to Know About the Arkansas Oil Spill

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/6-things-you-need-know-about-arkansas-oil-spill



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1. Not Your Average Crude

InsideClimate News reported shortly after the spill that an Exxon official confirmed the pipeline was "transporting a heavy form of crude from the Canadian tar sands region." Specifically, it has been identified as Wabasca Heavy, Lisa Song writes, "which is a type of diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from Alberta's tar sands region" although you won't hear any Exxon folks calling it tar sands.

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2. Not Your Average Pipeline

The Pegasus pipeline running more than 850 miles between Patoka, Illinois and Nederland, Texas, is 20 inches in diameter and was built in the 1940s to carry crude from Texas to Illinois. But in 2006 the flow was reversed in order to carry Canadian tar sands to Texas. As Ben Jervey wrote for DeSmog blog, the flow was reversed to "help relieve the tar sands crude bottleneck in Cushing, Oklahoma. (The same reason given by proponents for the construction of Keystone XL.)"

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3. Tax Exempt?

Who's footing the bill for the cleanup? The government has an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that companies which transport oil must pay into. But, as it turns out, the bitumen that Exxon was transporting in its pipeline isn't oil by government standards. Erin O'Sullivan writes for Oil Change International:

In a January 2011 memorandum, the IRS determined that to generate revenues for the oil spill trust fund, Congress only intended to tax conventional crude, and not tar sands or other unconventional oils. This exemption remains to this day, even though the United States moves billions of gallons of tar sands crude through its pipeline system every year. The trust fund is liable for tar sands oil spill cleanups without collecting any revenue from tar sands transport. If the fund goes broke, the American taxpayer foots the cleanup bill.

[Orrex]

1. Well I for one am relieved that our oil companies are protected during this disaster

Whew!

[xchrom]

2. it was *this* close! nt

[Divernan]

3. 6. How will this affect decisions on the Keystone pipeline?

"Those who have been against the pipeline because of its environmental risks have new fodder. Others who were previously in favor or indifferent may have second thoughts, especially considering that the Pegasus pipeline capacity was only about a tenth of what the Keystone XL would carry.

Any pipeline poses risks, but tar sands pipelines pose even more risks than conventional oil. "TransCanada's first Keystone pipeline leaked 12 times in its first 12 months," wrote Sierra Club's Michael Brune. "Because tar sands must be pumped at higher pressures and temperatures than conventional oil, it corrodes pipes faster."

Just days before the Arkansas spill, a coalition of environmental groups, led by the National Wildlife Federation, as well as landowners, and others filed a petition with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the EPA, calling on them to enact stronger safety regulations for pipelines carrying tar sands oil. The petition may well pick up more backers in the spill's aftermath

And I add that, as demonstrated by the EPA's failure to adequately monitor the situation in Love Canal (toxins have now migrated underground to neighboring residential areas, and just this month a +$100 million suit has been filed by residents for health issues and property damages), despite the EPA, years ago, assuring all that all toxins had been "contained"; and in Kalamazoo, where a tar sand oil spill in 2010 is still nowhere near cleaned up; the EPA cannot control or predict the transference of toxic substances. Toxins do not lie inert on ground or water surfaces, waiting to be scooped up! Tar sands oil, for instance, being 50 to 70 times heavier than the earlier oil sent through pipelines, sinks to the bottom of any water it hits and then goes into the soil/sediment on the bottom, which has proven impossible to be cleaned up. Toxins on the ground are transported by rain water to underground water tables which spread them great distances from the original spills.

[mercymechap]

4. What else is new?

"If the fund goes broke, the American taxpayer foots the cleanup bill."

[woo me with science]

5. kick

[intheflow]

6. K&R to expose the worst tax loophole ever!

Oil companies don't have to pay for clean-up because this isn't oil oil, it's tar sand oil. WTF, IRS?!