Chevron: Oil in Utah leaked from quarter-size hole

[highplainsdem]

Source: AP

Chevron: Oil in Utah leaked from quarter-size hole
By PAUL FOY (AP)



SALT LAKE CITY — Chevron Corp. said Monday it believes an electrical arc from a power line torched a quarter-size hole in a pipeline that spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into a Salt Lake City creek over the weekend.

Rocky Mountain Power said the chain of events began with a tree limb that fell onto a power line late Friday, but the utility said it would be highly unusual for an arc to drill a hole in a buried pipeline by traveling through a metal fence post.

Chevron officials said the fence post was anchored within inches of the 3-foot-deep pipeline and could have acted like an electric torch, puncturing a hole in the pipe's metal casing.

"We think of this as a one-in-a-million event," Mark Sullivan, manager of Chevron's oil refinery, said Monday at an oil-coated city pond. He said the systems in place for detecting pipeline leaks never imagined "this very unusual circumstance."

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Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jD8YsErqosS1OtHjMRgJrNhdaCvAD9GBBC7O0

[CHIMO]

1. Black Swan

If it would have been a penny sized hole it would never have been detected. (It could have bled forever. Or until the company wasn't able to pay the liabilities.)

[primavera]

2. A "one in a million event" that keeps happening over and over again

The number of oil spills doubled under the Bushista junta. Take a clue, guys, you aren't being anything close to careful enough.

[TheMadMonk]

3. FFS learn to tell the bloody difference between actual malfeasance and simple...

...mischance.

Tony Hayward selling off exactly enough shares to pay off his mortage six weeks before the blowout is NOT a fucking conspiracy.

Some bloke sinking a star picket to within a couple of inches of a pipeline was lucky enough to stop driving when he did. A power line coming down on top of that picket some time later is NOT a conspiracy.

There is plenty enough shit actually broken by the Bush regulatory hiatus, that we don't have to go looking for trouble in places where the only ones playing silly buggers are the gods.

[ShockediSay]

4. and over and over and over

What does it take to revamp the bureacrisies involved?

Too many years and too little money given that the filthy rich
don't wanna pay taxes