Using aging, retrofitted pipelines to ship oil — what could go wrong?

[marmar]

from Grist:


Using aging, retrofitted pipelines to ship oil — what could go wrong?
By Suzi Parker


Until the Pegasus pipeline ruptured on March 29, leaking an estimated 147,000 to 210,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into the town of Mayflower, Ark., few Arkansans knew it was even there.

In fact, thousands of miles of pipelines snake through the heart of the United States. Proponents insist that pipelines are the safest way to transport oil — safer than trucks or trains or tankers. Yet, in recent years, the Yellowstone River spill in Montana, the Kalamazoo River spill in Marshall, Mich., and now the Mayflower spill, have alerted Americans to the dirty dangers that lurk underneath the country.

There are 175,000 miles of onshore and offshore “Hazardous Liquid” pipelines pumping petroleum and its byproducts across the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which oversees all pipelines. From 1990 to 2011, more than 110 million gallons of mostly crude oil and petroleum products spilled from these pipelines, many of which now carry chemicals that are much different than those for which they were designed.

Most of these spills go unreported by the press, but activists hope that the sight of black crude oozing through a subdivision of $200,000 brick homes in Mayflower, a town of 2,200 about 25 miles north of Little Rock, will spark the public’s ire, driving change on both the local and national levels. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/climate-energy/using-aging-retrofitted-pipelines-to-ship-oil-what-could-go-wrong/