Exxon Confirms 80,000-Gallon Spill Contains Canadian Tar Sands Oil

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-confirms-80000-gallon-spill-contains-canadian-tar-sands-oil


Location of Mayflower, Ark. and nearby water sources. (Source: Google maps)

A pipeline that ruptured and leaked at least 80,000 gallons of oil into central Arkansas on Friday was transporting a heavy form of crude from the Canadian tar sands region, ExxonMobil told InsideClimate News.

Local police said the line gushed oil for 45 minutes before being stopped, according to media reports.

Crude oil ran through a subdivision of Mayflower, Ark., about 20 miles north of Little Rock. Twenty-two homes were evacuated, but no one was hospitalized, Exxon spokesman Charlie Engelmann said on Saturday.

In an interview with InsideClimate News, Faulkner County Judge Allen Dodson said emergency crews prevented the oil from entering waterways. The judge issued an emergency declaration following the spill and is involved in coordinating clean-up efforts among federal, state and local agencies and Exxon.

[Divernan]

1. This spill was Canadian tar sands crude, which is nearly impossible to clean up

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130330/exxon-confirms-ruptured-pipeline-ark-carried-canadian-dilbit

The 20-inch Pegasus pipeline runs 858 miles from Patoka, Ill. to Nederland, Texas. Engelmann said the line was carrying Wabasca Heavy crude from western Canada when it ruptured.

Wabasca Heavy is a type of diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from Alberta's tar sands region, according to the Canadian Crude Quality Monitoring Program, an industry source that provides data on different types of Canadian oil.

Because dilbit contains bitumen—a type of crude oil that's heavier (50 to 70 times heavier!)than most conventional crude oil—it can be harder to clean up when it spills into water. A 2010 spill in Michigan, which released a million gallons of dilbit in the Kalamazoo River and has cost pipeline operator Enbridge more than $820 million, continues to challenge scientists and regulators as they work on removing submerged oil from the riverbed.

A 2010 spill in Kalamazoo, MI, has STILL not been cleaned up, despite monumental efforts. This link is to a report one year after (2011), and explains why tar sands oil is so much more difficult, in part impossible, to clean up. These folks in Arkansas can kiss that street goodbye. No home insurer or mortgage broker will touch those properties.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aswift/kalamazoo_one_year_later_anato.html#.UVig9qx8gjo.facebook

[Divernan]

2. EPA admits full tar sands cleanup can take years (& they're guessing about that)

The Michigan tar sands oil spill is nearly 3 years old. This article is one year post spill.

mazoo_one_year_later_anato.html#.UVig9qx8gjo.facebook
A year-long effort to clean up the largest tar sands spill in U.S. history has established one thing – raw tar sands crude is unlike anything we’ve had in our pipelines before. Last year, Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline spilled over 840,000 gallons of raw tar sands into the Kalamazoo River watershed. Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been struggling to deal with the new challenges that a tar sands spill present. EPA originally set a September 2010 deadline to clean up the spill. Ten months later, EPA officials now say that a full cleanup could take years. The Kalamazoo spill is a stark warning of the risks that TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline poses to the Yellowstone River, the Ogallala Aquifer and the nearly two thousand other rivers, streams and water bodies that it would cross.

Raw tar sands bitumen is nearly solid at room temperature and must be diluted with toxic natural gas liquids to create the thick sludge that travels in high pressure pipelines. This sludge is between fifty and seventy times as thick as conventional crude oil. When spilled, the light natural gas liquid in the tar sands vaporizes, creating a toxic flammable gas that poses a health hazard to emergency responders and nearby landowners. The bitumen, which is heavier than water, sinks into rivers and mixes with sediments. Bitumen contains significantly more heavy metals than conventional crudes and does not biodegrade.

What is the status of the spill? Cleanup crews have recovered 766,000 gallons of tar sands crude oil, 113,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris, and over 15 million gallons of oily water so far. Despite all of this work, over 200 acres are still contaminated with tar sands oil. Much of this is in the form of submerged oil that has contaminated the beds of Talmadge Creek, Morrow Lake and the Kalamazoo River.

Conventional spill response measures cannot recover this submerged oil. EPA has been forced to improvise, using extreme measures like chain dragging riverbeds to get submerged oil into the water where it can be recovered.

EPA’s on-site spill coordinator Mark Durno summed it up, “Where we thought we might be winding down our piece of the response, we’re actually ramping back up. The submerged oil is a real story -- it’s a real eye-opener. … In larger spills we’ve dealt with before, we haven’t seen nearly this footprint of submerged oil, if we’ve seen any at all.”

[Champion Jack]

3. Arkansas is trying to pass an eminent domain law

Which, would mean that these pipelines could go across your property whether you wanted it or not

[Frustratedlady]

4. It is criminal how close they are to water.

Last I saw, Arkansas water was wonderful. Are the Kochs involved in this, as well?

[wtmusic]

5. Local TV news reported it had leaked into Lake Conway

This kind of looks like backwater, and that kind of looks like an oil truck.

[Divernan]

6. Once it's in the water, that's all she wrote, as per the Kalamzoo experience.

Repeating from my post above re inability to clean this oil from water or lakebed, riverbed, etc. Again this report was one year after the spill, back in 2011. Has anyone from the government announced newly discovered ways to remedy this mess? If not, why is Obama still supporting the Keystone pipeline?

What is the status of the spill? Cleanup crews have recovered 766,000 gallons of tar sands crude oil, 113,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris, and over 15 million gallons of oily water so far. Despite all of this work, over 200 acres are still contaminated with tar sands oil. Much of this is in the form of submerged oil that has contaminated the beds of Talmadge Creek, Morrow Lake and the Kalamazoo River.

[uConventional spill response measures cannot recover this submerged oil. EPA has been forced to improvise, using extreme measures like chain dragging riverbeds to get submerged oil into the water where it can be recovered.

EPA’s on-site spill coordinator Mark Durno summed it up, “Where we thought we might be winding down our piece of the response, we’re actually ramping back up. The submerged oil is a real story -- it’s a real eye-opener. … In larger spills we’ve dealt with before, we haven’t seen nearly this footprint of submerged oil, if we’ve seen any at all.”

On the anniversary of the worst tar sand spill in U.S. history, the House of Representatives is considering a measure that would expedite the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Congress is considering this bill despite being told by the Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that there were no regulations in place to ensure the safety of tar sands pipelines. Meanwhile, the State Department’s latest environmental review of Keystone XL assumes that tar sands crude will behave like conventional crude when spilled.

A year after the Kalamazoo spill, the Obama Administration should know better.

[wtmusic]

7. If Exxon's not careful, they'll get hit with another $1.7M fine

Only 23,000 of those would erase their entire 2013 profit.

I guess the new "leak detection technology" they've been hyping is a little slow on the draw.

[One_Life_To_Give]

9. 1940's reg's were lax to non-existent

There was a surge in pipelines planned as part of the response to U-Boat attacks. This pipeline was probably thought of around that time and was completed during the post-war period.

This is more a tale of our aging infrastructure. 60-70yr old pipelines carrying, oil, water, sewage etc. are all at risk.

[freshwest]

8. Soooo - why the shiny thing about Keystone? They're doing it already? Nice.

[rdharma]

10. Block Keystone XL!!!!!!!

[MoreGOPoop]

11. Kick

"...at least 80,000 gallons..."

Kicking, because there seems to be an effort to minimize this horror. Also, nobody has mentioned the fact that the Exxon/Mobil/Enbridge Pegasus pipeline runs under Lake Conway. We should question the integrity of all the pipelines.

Thanks, xchrom.