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by harry ashburn » Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:07 pm
by harry ashburn » Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:11 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 02, 2012 2:21 pm
Suspicious: The Green-Party Candidate Gets Busted
By Charles P. Pierce
at 8:40PM
I nearly got locked out of the debate grounds at Hofstra the other night. I was standing in a parking lot with about seven other lost journalistic souls and waiting for the media shuttle bus that would take us to the credentialing center. That was about when it got a little weird. The poor guy running the lot told us, first, that they'd be holding the credentialing process open for an extra 15 minutes because of our plight but, unfortunately, and these were his words, "The bus can't get back here yet because the Secret Service won't open the access road." This seemed odd, two hours before the debate was scheduled to start, so we asked why. "Protestors," the guy said.
This struck us all as hinky because we'd all been wandering around, and all we'd seen were some very well-behaved people waving signs and chanting, and yet we were getting second-hand reports that Chicago '68 might have been breaking out. It got even stranger when the bus finally showed up and we rode past the protestors, all of whom seemed perfectly willing to do their protesting from the sidewalk.
Forgive my suspicious mind, then, when I suggest that this whole bizarre pantomime may have merely been an excuse to keep the likes of us away from the fact that a presidential candidate was being hauled off to an improvised hoosegow....
Certainly, the notion that "protestors" had to be cleared from the streets was belied not only by the evidence of our own eyes, but also by the fact that Dr. Jill Stein tells Amy Goodman here that she and her running mate were the only two detainees in that facility.
We were held at a facility, especially created for detaining protesters at the debates. It appeared to be a warehouse which had been specially equipped. It was obviously-you know, they were prepared to handle a lot of people. They had 13 officers there and three plainclothesmen. For most of the time, it was just Cheri Honkala and myself, yet they felt the need to keep us in tight plastic restraints, tightly secured to metal chairs.
(Full disclosure: Dr. Stein and I are old friends. Our sons fenced together through high school.)
If there really had been disturbances, they'd have been a little less lonely in there. As it is, if what she says about the handcuffs is true, somebody should be turning on a spit.
by Laodicean » Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:26 pm
‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor
by Brad Johnson | 6 Mar 2013 4:33 PM
Master Services Agreement between TransCanada and Environmental Resources Management to write Keystone XL Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement
The State Department’s “don’t worry” environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, released late Friday afternoon, was written not by government officials but by a private company in the pay of the pipeline’s owner. The “sustainability consultancy” Environmental Resources Management (ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document. The statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands is unstoppable.
The department’s contractor-written Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement even says the pipeline will be safe from the climate impacts to which it will contribute.
The documents from the ERM-TransCanada agreement are on the State Department’s website, but payment amounts and other clients and past work of ERM are redacted. In the contract documents, ERM partner Steven J. Koster certifies that his company has no conflicts of interest. He also certifies that ERM has no business relationship with TransCanada or “any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed work” (notwithstanding the impact statement contract itself). In a cover letter, Koster promises State Department NEPA Coordinator Genevieve Walker that ERM understands “the need for an efficient and expedited process to meet the demands of the desired project schedule.”
An investigation by Inside Climate News finds that ERM’s report draws from work done by other oil industry contractors, Ensys Energy and ICF International.
Because the impact statement was written by a TransCanada contractor, not by State Department officials, it should come as no surprise that it presents a worldview of a global economy inevitably dependent on dirty fossil fuels that is entirely at odds with the expressed views of Secretary of State John Kerry.
As Secretary of State John Kerry said six years ago, “we’re on an urgent clock” to confront fossil-fueled climate change, which he compared to the threat of nuclear weaponry as a “man-made” and “uncontrolled” weapon with “the ability to change life as we know it on this Earth.” Kerry’s recognition of the scientific necessity to keep global concentrations of carbon dioxide below 450 ppm should preclude the possibility of building a pipeline designed to pump 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide worth of tar sands crude over decades.
According to TransCanada’s paid report, “production of WCSB and Bakken crude oil will proceed with or without the proposed Project.”
As Kerry said last month, “We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy.”
by seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 30, 2013 2:53 pm
Arkansas residents evacuate as Exxon-Mobil tar sands pipeline ruptures
By David Ferguson
Saturday, March 30, 2013 12:38 EDT
An Exxon-Mobil oil pipeline ruptured Friday afternoon in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, forcing the evacuation of 20 homes and shutting down sections of interstate highway. According to Little Rock’s KATV, a hazardous materials team from the Office of Emergency Management has contained the spill and is currently attempting a cleanup.
The burst pipe is part of the Pegasus pipeline network, which connects tar sands along the Gulf coast to refineries in Houston. Thousands of gallons of crude oil erupted from the breach around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, spilling through a housing subdivision and into the town’s storm drainage system, fouling drainage ditches and shutting down Highway 365 and Interstate 40.
Residents were evacuated to avoid health hazards from crude oil fumes and to keep stray sparks from igniting the standing oil. Emergency workers contained the spill by hastily constructing earthen dams.
Exxon-Mobil reportedly has a crew investigating the accident. The company released a statement Friday that read, in part, “We are working with emergency responders and local authorities to respond to the incident and are establishing an information line for community support. We regret that this incident has occurred and we apologize for any disruption or inconvenience this has caused.”
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission told Channel 7 News that, as an interstate pipeline, Pegasus has no local control, oversight or inspection. Only federal officials from the Pipeline and Hazard Material Safety Administration are authorized to inspect and maintain the pipeline.
Watch video about this story, embedded below via KATV:
by seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 06, 2013 3:05 am
Arkansas town in lockdown after oil spill nightmare
By Suzi Parker
REUTERS / Jacob Slaton
There’s one Exxon gas station in Mayflower, Ark.
Before last Friday, that’s likely as close as Mayflower residents got to the multinational oil and gas behemoth ExxonMobil. But after the Pegasus Pipeline burst last Friday, sending thousands of gallons of tar-sands oil into the Northwoods neighborhood, the company became omnipresent in this small town of 2,200 people.
The first thing you notice when driving into Mayflower is the stench. Travelers can smell the fumes from Interstate 40, which runs through the town. Within town limits, the smell is putrid: Imagine wet asphalt on a hot summer’s day — times 10,000. At the local Harp’s grocery, something less than half a mile from the spill, the stink makes your eyes water and your nose burn.
But the reek is only a hint at ExxonMobil’s presence here. Since thick black sludge first began oozing across backyards and into the streets, surprising many residents who say they didn’t even realize the pipeline was there, the company has instituted something like martial law.
Bank signs that once advertised interest rates and loan information now flash, “Thank you for your help and patience Mayflower,” along with a toll-free number residents can call to make financial claims to ExxonMobil. Company workers wearing logoed shirts roam throughout the town. Local police guard the entrance to the neighborhood where the spill happened. On Starlite Road, where oil flowed down the street last week, workers vacuum up oil in yards and steam-wash pavement.
The oil company has also taken over wildlife rescue from a local organization; independent rescuers report that they are being forced to leave private property by ExxonMobil enforcers. (Casualties so far include oil-covered ducks, snakes, and nutria.) Reporters who accompanied Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel on a tour of the spill on Wednesday were asked to leave by Exxon representatives. Even the state Department of Environmental Quality refers reporters to the Exxon downstream media line for information.
Earlier this week, ExxonMobil requested — and received — a temporary no-fly zone over the oil spill. A local newspaper reported that the only aircraft allowed in the area were those under the direction of Tom Suhrhoff, who according to LinkedIn is an aviation adviser at ExxonMobil. After a two-day prohibition, some media were allowed to fly over on Thursday.
Even the Mayflower High School’s cafeteria was ExxonMobil turf on Tuesday night when the company held a meeting for residents in the affected neighborhood, where 22 homes remain evacuated. Reporters were barred from that event, but an activist who slipped in said the Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Health, and the county judge all spoke along with ExxonMobil officials.
Mayflower residents should get used to their new reality, says Ernest DelBuono, a senior vice president and Crisis Practice Chair at LEVICK, a strategic communications firm in Washington, D.C. “Exxon is going to do what they have to do clean it up,” DelBuono says. “They will be judged in courts on how quickly and efficiently they cleaned it up.”
But DelBuono, a former Coast Guard official who was in charge of communications for the Exxon Valdez cleanup, says that usually there is a keen federal presence in such spills. During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, he says, BP may have been running the show, but there was an orchestrated effort to keep the company out of public briefings. Those were handled by federal government officials from various agencies.
The BP disaster was a different beast because it involved various states and overlapping jurisdictions. And the Mayflower spill is much smaller. But DelBuono says that a prominent federal and state presence is still needed in these crises. And while Exxon spends its time reassuring residents that cleanup is going according to plan, it’s very clear that life is far from normal.
The 65-year-old Pegasus Pipeline ruptured in the Northwoods neighborhood, just off the town’s main highway, which is lined with dollar stores and a Sonic drive-in. The thick tar-sands oil ran into creeks and tributaries throughout the area. ExxonMobil officials have repeatedly said that they prevented any runoff into Lake Conway, a popular fishing and recreation spot. The company reports that it has placed barriers and 3,600 feet of boom around the lake. Aerial photos, however, show oil in marshes near the lake, and another photo shows dead vegetation in the lake.
And then there’s that stench. Exxon sent a mailer to Mayflower residents stating, in part, “Although you may smell an odor, current air quality readings are below levels likely to cause health effects with the exception of the clean-up areas where the emergency responders are directly working.”
It’s unclear what exactly is in these fumes, but previous tar-sands leaks include toxic natural gas liquids and other petrochemical diluents. And the fumes appear to be seriously affecting people.
Eight school children went home sick on Monday from Mayflower schools. Ed Barham, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Health, said that air monitors are now in and around the school. “There were not levels of benzene that would be harmful,” Barham said of the children’s illnesses. “We don’t have evidence that they were sick because of the oil.”
Tracy Wilson, a resident of nearby Conway, Ark., says that her parents, who are in their 60s and have health issues, live about a mile away from the site. Both have been getting sicker since Sunday, she says, with upset stomachs, headaches, and burning noses. She spent all day Wednesday calling agencies, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, but continued to get “the runaround.”
“People who live outside that neighborhood [on the fringes of the evacuation zone] have no clue what is going on,” Wilson says. “I want to know from the health department what they should be treated for if they go to a doctor.”
Wilson also called the ExxonMobil claims office on Wednesday. She said a company representative returned her call on late Wednesday offering to put her parents in a hotel room and reimburse them for any medical expenses. But Wilson said she wondered what strings were attached to the offer. Still, on Thursday, her parents accepted a company-sponsored hotel room and food allowance.
ExxonMobil reported Thursday in its daily email release to reporters that 640 workers are responding to the cleanup along with local, state, and federal officials. The company reports that 12,000 barrels of oil and water were recovered in the first few days of the spill. More than half of the impacted soil has been removed from six yards. It’s unclear when the evacuated families will be able to return to their homes.
The spill comes at a critical moment. Environmental groups are pushing against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The pipeline needs the Obama administration’s approval to finalize its permitting. Keystone Blockaders are currently in Mayflower documenting the oil spill.
They aren’t the only ones. Attorney General McDaniel has demanded that ExxonMobil produce investigative reports, inspection reports, and other information connected to pipeline rupture and oil spill by April 10.
“The people of Arkansas deserve a full explanation from Exxon about how this incident occurred and the extent of damages to private property and to our state’s natural resources,” McDaniel said. “My office is determined to get that explanation through our investigation because, at the moment, we still have many more questions than we do answers.”
UPDATE: McDaniel reported Friday morning that there is oil in Lake Conway despite ExxonMobil’s assurances to the contrary. “Great efforts have been taken to limit the spread of the oil to only one area of Lake Conway, which is referred to as the Cove, but the Cove and Lake Conway are hydrologically connected and are therefore one body of water,” Aaron Sadler, spokesman for McDaniel, told Grist. Meanwhile, access to the site continues to be tightly policed. According to InsideClimate, ExxonMobil threatened reporter Lisa Song with arrest on Wednesday when she entered the command center looking for government officials.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 06, 2013 4:40 am
Third major oil spill in a week: Shell pipeline breaks in Texas
Get short URL Published time: April 05, 2013 19:24
AFP Photo / Joe Raedle
Thousands of gallons of oil have spilled from a pipeline in Texas, the third accident of its kind in only a week.
Shell Pipeline, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, shut down their West Columbia, Texas, pipeline last Friday after electronic calculations conducted by the US National Response Center showed that upwards of 700 barrels had been lost, amounting to almost 30,000 gallons of crude oil.
By Monday, Shell spokespeople said inspectors found “no evidence” of an oil leak, but days later it was revealed that a breach did occur. Representatives with the US Coast Guard confirmed to Dow Jones on Thursday that roughly 50 barrels of oil spilled from a pipe near Houston, Texas and entered a waterway that connects to the Gulf of Mexico.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Steven Lehman said that Shell had dispatched clean-up crews that were working hard to correct any damage to Vince Bayou, a small waterway that runs for less than 20 miles from the Houston area into a shipping channel that opens into the Gulf.
The spill was contained, said Lehman, who was hesitant to offer an official number on how much crude was lost in the accident. According to Shell spokeswoman Kim Windon, though, the damage could have been quite significant. After being presented with the estimate that said as much as 700 barrels were found to have leaked from the pipeline due to an unknown cause, investigators determined that 60 barrels entered the bayou.
"That's a very early estimate--things can change," Officer Lehman told Dow Jones.
Meanwhile, though, rescue works in Arkansas have been getting their hands dirty responding to an emergency there. A rupture in ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline late last week send thousands of barrels of oil into the small town of Mayflower, around 25 miles outside of Little Rock. Authorities evacuated more than 20 homes in response, and by this Thursday roughly 19,000 barrels had been recovered.
Another incident in Canada this week caused an estimated 400 barrels — or roughly 16,800 gallons — of oil to be compromised in northern Ontario when a train derailed. Originally, Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd said only four barrels were lost in the accident.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 07, 2013 9:53 am
UPDATE II: A spokesperson for ExxonMobil responded to my inquiry about how and where these ducks where coming into contact with the oil and whether the spill had reached Lake Conway. Here is the full response I received via email:
Chris,
Regarding your inquiry, the birds had landed on soiled areas.
Best regards,
Kim Jordan
Upstream Media Relations Advisor
Wow, thanks!
Are 'oiled' birds in Arkansas signs the Exxon oil spill has spread to Lake Conway? (UPDATED)
by justdrew » Sun Apr 07, 2013 6:23 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:18 pm
SUN APR 07, 2013 AT 04:43 PM PDT
Federal lawsuit is filed over Arkansas oil gusher
bybeach babe in flFollowforClimate Change SOS
A Federal class action lawsuit has been filed by two women who live near an ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured last week and spilled thousands of barrels of oil in central Arkansas.
The class-action complaint from Kimla Greene and Kathryn Jane Roachell Chunn comes a week after ExxonMobil Pipeline Co.'s Pegasus pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock. Crews are still working to clean up oil that spewed onto lawns and roadways and almost fouled nearby Lake Conway.
The women are seeking money to make up for "a permanent diminishment in property value," according to the complaint. Their complaint says the women are bringing their lawsuit on their own behalf and for other people who live near the pipeline in Arkansas.
One of the women's lawyers, Phillip Duncan, wouldn't spell out exactly how much money they're looking for, but their lawsuit says they're seeking more than $5 million in damages for property owners. The lawsuit said the part of the pipeline that ruptured was "in an unsafe, defective and deficient condition presenting an immediate environmental harm" on March 29 -- the day it ruptured. "The Pegasus Pipeline running throughout the state of Arkansas is most likely to be similarly situated and maintained ..." Greene and Chunn's lawyers wrote in the complaint.
The Pegasus pipeline, which runs from Patoka, Ill., to the Texas Gulf Coast, was originally built in 1947 and 1948, according to federal pipeline safety officials. It is currently out of service. For that to change, ExxonMobil would need written approval from a federal pipeline safety official, according to the order from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Arkansas Attorney General is confirming that indeed there is oil in Lake Conroy.
"I think it's very fair to say that Lake Conway has not received catastrophic damage, but of course there is oil in Lake Conway."
The state of Arkansas is preparing for litigation. McDaniel says they have sent subpoenas and are coordinating with the Department of Environmental Equality, the EPA, and the Department of Transportation Pipeline Safety.
It's going to be very difficult if impossible to repair or rebuild the Pegasus pipeline. This is the way we have to fight; one pipeline at a time.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 08, 2013 3:32 pm
14 Things You Need to Know About the Horrifying Arkansas Oil Spill
The situation remains fluid, as it were, with potential impacts possible from local to global.
April 8, 2013 |
Within a week of the ExxonMobil tar sands oil pipeline burst in Mayflower, Arkansas, ExxonMobil was in charge of the clean-up, the U.S. government had established a no-fly zone over the area, some 40 residents were starting their second week of evacuation, ExxonMobil was threatening to arrest reporters trying to cover the spill, and several homeowners had filed a class action lawsuit seeking damages from the world's second-most-profitable corporation, which had helped keep the pipeline secret from terrorists.
Before March 29, even some people living next to ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipelinedidn't know it was there. All that changed abruptly around 2:45 pm that Good Friday afternoon, when a resident of the suburban subdivision reported a fresh rivulet of diluted Wabasca heavy crude oil from Canada snaking across the lawn, pooling around children's yard toys, filling gutters, and flowing on down the street, to the nearest storm drain.
(Horrendous slideshow here)
And it smelled! The smell carried for miles. Up close, prolonged exposure was potentially unhealthy, for lung, brain, peace of mind. Environmental responders monitored the air quality for days, but only some of the cleanup workers wore breathing masks.
The pipeline gushed for almost an hour before ExxonMobil had it shut down.
The cleanup began at once and continues. Local volunteers responded immediately to keep the spill from entering nearby Lake Conway, with apparent success so far. Rain hasn't helped. ExxonMobil has promised to be there till it's done. Local, state, and federal teams are also on site, but the situation remains fluid, as it were, with potential impacts possible from local to global.
Eight days into the Mayflower spill, here are some of the questions it raises and some of the current answers, subject to future refinement.
1. Why Didn't People Know They Were Living Near a Pipeline?
Excellent question. And if it gets to court as a real estate dispute, a judge may have to weigh the comparative negligence of a seller's failure to disclose against a buyer's failure to do due diligence.
But government decisions in recent years made due diligence more difficult. After September 11, 2001, fear of further terrorist attacks led to concern about the pipeline as a target. As the local KTHV television station reported, "details of its location were somewhat suppressed, but the information has become more public since then."
2. Is That Why There's a No-Fly Zone, Fear of Terrorists?
Probably not. The official Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notice was effective shortly after 2 p.m. on April Fools Day and stated: "No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered" by the notice, which cited unnamed "hazards" and was effective "until further notice." The area covered is a circle with a 5-mile radius around the spill, up to an altitude of 1,000 feet.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on April 3 that relief aircraft in the no-fly zone would be "under the direction of Tom Suhrhoff," who turns out to be an ExxonMobil employee.
The same day, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford told Dow Jones that at least one helicopter was needed to move workers around and scout the area for further spills, and that helicopter (or helicopters) needed to be able to move about freely without needing to worry about other aircraft in the area.
A five-minute aerial video, shot by Adam Randall the same day the FAA put the no-fly zone order in place, shows some of the cleanup activities at the subdivision and in the surrounding wetlands, where the oil spread is measured in miles:
Rivulets of oil filled up ravines and trenches in the marshes near Mayflower. Black balls of crude rolled on top of the water, with the major portions of Lake Conway protected by floating partitions.
3. How Big Was the Spill in Mayflower, Arkansas?
Probably nobody knows yet. ExxonMobil said it was providing equipment and manpower sufficient to deal with a spill of 10,000 barrels. ExxonMobil also said that was a "conservative" response to the spill, which they expect is smaller. ExxonMobil considers this a small spill.
Published estimates of the size of the spill range from 2,000 to 12,000 barrels. By April 5, USA Today was reporting the spill as "tens of thousands of barrels of heavy crude oil."
The U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration estimate is 3,500-5000 barrels. (A rough estimate based on the pipeline capacity of 90,000 barrels per day, with the pipeline gushing for an hour would produce a spill of about 3,750 barrels of Wabasca heavy crude tar sands oil.)
By the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a "major spill" is anything more than 249 barrels.
Regulators recently levied a fine of $1.7 million on ExxonMobil for a July 2011 spill in the Yellowstone River in Montana, where the amount of oil spilled was about 1,500 barrels.
4. What's the Worst That Can Happen from This Spill?
The biggest concern when the spill was first discovered was that the raw oil would reach Lake Conway, only a mile from the hole in the pipeline.
As an Arkansas state promotional website explains:
At 6,700-acres, Lake Conway is the largest man-made game and fish commission lake in the United States. Construction of the lake began in 1948, with its waters coming from the runoff of Stone Dam Creek, Gold Creek, Palarm Creek, Little Cypress Creek and Panther Creek. Its average depth is six feet, with a maximum depth of 18 feet. The lake is approximately eight miles long with 52 miles of shoreline.
The lake is separated from the pipeline by an Interstate highway (a source of daily pollution itself), and within a few days of the spill the oil had migrated under the highway past several sets of oil booms set out by ExxonMobil.
So far the spill has injured or killed 16 ducks, two turtles, and a muskrat.
5. Who Filed a Lawsuit? And on What Grounds?
Two residents of the polluted Northwoods subdivision, Kimla Greene and Kathryn Jane Roachell Chunn, filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Little Rock on April 5, seeking an unstated amount of damages on behalf of themselves and their neighbors, anyone living within 3,000 feet of the burst pipeline.
The suit seeks compensation for damage caused by the pipeline failure, including lost property values, environmental damage, and other harm, the value of which could reach several million dollars, if they win the case.
6. Who Decided Who Should Be Evacuated?
The Mayflower Incident Unified Command includes ExxonMobil, Faulkner County, the EPA, and the City of Mayflower. Local officials reportedly recommended the evacuation of 22 houses closest to the pipeline soon after the spill occurred. There seems to have been no resistance. ExxonMobil has promised to pay the expenses of the some 40 people evacuated. The City of Mayflower maintains a web site with details of the spill and response.
Residents may not be allowed to return to their homes for a month or more. So far they have filed about 140 claims with ExxonMobil.
7. Who Instituted What Amounts to Martial Law in the Subdivision?
Nobody, at least not officially. Some reporters have complained about the heavy-handed controls imposed by authorities, who have effectively closed off the spill zone as they see fit. Suzi Parker in Grist argued that ExxonMobil "has instituted something like martial law."
Lisa Song from Inside Climate News and Michael Hibblen of local public radio KUAR described similar encounters with the Faulkner County Sheriff's Department. Both recount the sheriff's deputies first denying them access to the site and herding them into a restricted area. Then, soon after, without explanation, the deputies ordered the reporters to leave within 10 seconds or face arrest for criminal trespass.
This use of county sheriff departments is a pattern in East Texas, where TransCanada is building the Keystone XL pipeline to carry more dilbit, tar sands oil, to Gulf coast refineries. In Texas the deputies under the control of TransCanada used pepper spray, physical violence, and forms of torture on protestors before arresting most of them. There have been no reported arrests in Arkansas.
8. What's the Difference Between Wabasca Heavy Crude and Tar Sands Oil?
Little or nothing.
If there's any significant difference, it's not widely known yet. It all comes from the same wide region of Canada, it's all bitumen, and it all has to be diluted to be moved by pipeline. What's in the pipeline is all diluted bitumen, or dilbit.
It's hard to find out what the dilutants (or diluents) are, which is probably important.
9. Where Does Wabasca Heavy Crude Oil Come From?
Wabasca Heavy comes from the tar sands region of Alberta, Canada. It moves primarily via Pembina and Rainbow pipelines to Edmonton and on to the pipeline nexus in Hardisty. From there it is distributed to destinations in Canada and the U.S.
One route takes Wabasca Heavy through the existing Keystone pipeline to Patoka, Illinois. There it transfers to ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline which takes it to Nederland, Texas, by way of Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.
10. What Is this Pegasus Pipeline?
ExxonMobil owns and operates the Pegasus pipeline, a 20-inch diameter pipe that is 858 miles long and is mostly buried between Patoka, Illinois, and Nederland, Texas.
Pegasus was built in the 1940s, to bring refined oil north from Texas. In 2006, ExxonMobil reversed the direction of the pipeline's flow to carry Wabasca Heavy south. In 2009, ExxonMobil increased the carrying capacity of the pipeline by 50%, to 90,000 barrels per day. Published estimates of its carrying capacity range from 80,000 to 95,000 barrels per day.
An ExxonMobil press release announcing the expansion added that: "Operational enhancements, such as new leak detection technology, were also incorporated to support ExxonMobil Pipeline Company's primary focus on operating its pipelines in a safe and environmentally responsible manner."
The federal class action lawsuit alleges that these changes – including reversing the flow and increasing the capacity – weakened the pipeline and contributed directly to its failure in Mayflower.
On April 3, CBS News reported – falsely – that the pipeline had "carried crude oil from Canada to Texas for decades." CBS did not mention tar sands, bitumen, or dilbit, treating the spill by omission as if it were not unusual.
In 2010, ExxonMobil was fined $26,200 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration for failing to inspect the Pegasus pipeline as frequently as required by law.
The pipeline was last inspected in February 2013, but the results are not public.
11. So What Happens to the Wabasca Heavy in Nederland?
In Nederland, which is part of the greater Beaumont-Port Arthur metropolitan area along the Gulf coast of Texas, Wabasca Heavy will leave the pipeline for processing at one of the many local refineries.
12. Does Diluted Bitumen/Dilbit Corrode Pipelines Faster Than Other Oil?
The answer is in dispute.
Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) say dilbit corrosion is greater, based in part on the fact that pipelines carrying dilbit oil have spilled 3.6 times more oil than the U.S. average. A study by the Alberta government concluded that dilbit oil causes more pipeline failures than conventional oil. These arguments address somewhat different questions. The U.S. National Academies of Science has a committee studying the question, but it has so far been hampered by the unwillingness of pipeline companies to share sufficient data.
13. Has Dilbit Oil Ever Spilled Before?
Of course, although records are not comprehensive. The most notable diluted bitumen spill in recent history was in 2010, when an Enbridge owned-and-operated pipeline burst and dumped an unknown amount of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, polluting some 40 miles of river and wetlands.
The Kalamazoo River cleanup is now in its third year and has cost more than $800 million so far.
14. Who's the World's Most Profitable Corporation?
Gazprom, the Russian oil company, with almost $44.5 billion in annual profit, as reported in Fortune's Global 500 list (using 2011 data).
ExxonMobil is #2, with annual profits of $41 billion. This is good enough to rank ExxonMobil #1 among American corporations, way ahead of #2, Chevron, with annual profits of $26.9 billion.
Coming in third, at $32.2 billion a year, is the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:18 pm
Exxon's Arkansas Tar Sands Spill a Bargain
Rachel Maddow details how world's most profitable company pays almost nothing for continuing violations of federal law...
By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 4/8/2013, 2:48pm PT
It's just the cost of doing business for the world's most profitable corporation. And that "cost" is barely a blip (that may be an overstatement) on their daily profit sheet.
As Rachel Maddow noted on Friday in the short report below, ExxonMobil is the nation's largest and most profitable corporation. It is larger than Walmart, Google, McDonald's, American Express and Goldman Sachs...combined.
And yet, the penalties they pay for violating federal safety laws leading to oil spills is almost nothing at all. For example, when Exxon was caught failing to inspect a portion of the Pegasus Pipeline --- the one fill with sticky, gooey, tar sands crude that we don't know how to clean up...the pipeline that ruptured last week in a suburban neighborhood in Mayflower, AR --- they were fined a grand total of $26,000.
That's a $26,000 fine out of the $122 million dollars in profit that Exxon makes in per day.
"There is nothing that Exxon fears from the federal government," Maddow notes. "They have so captured the parts of the government that are supposed to punish them when this sort of thing happens, that the pain that that sort of punishment could cause them, redounds to them, essentially, not at all."
Yes, it pays for companies like Exxon to violate the law with impunity, so it will be left to the people of Arkansas, as Maddow explains, to make the company pay any kind of real price for their crime...if they can...
More photos of the Pegasus tar sands pipeline rupture in Mayflower, AR, taken by the EPA, are now posted here. Give 'em a look. If President Obama approves the Keystone XL pipeline, this is the type of spill that could be coming to a neighborhood near you very soon.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 09, 2013 11:36 am
Judge rules administration overlooked fracking risks in California mineral leases
By Rory Carroll
SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Apr 9, 2013 3:34am EDT
(Reuters) - A federal judge has ruled the Obama administration broke the law when it issued oil leases in central California without fully weighing the environmental impact of "fracking," a setback for companies seeking to exploit the region's enormous energy resources.
The decision, made public on Monday, effectively bars for the time being any drilling on two tracts of land comprising 2,500 acres leased for oil and gas development in 2011 by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management in Monterey County.
The tracts lie atop a massive bed of sedimentary rock known as the Monterey Shale Formation, estimated by the Energy Department to contain more than 15 billion barrels of oil, equal to 64 percent of the total U.S. shale oil reserves.
Most of that oil is not economically retrievable except by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a production-boosting technique in which large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected into shale formations to force hydrocarbon fuels to the surface.
Fracking itself is not a new technology but its widespread use in combination with advances in horizontal drilling to extract oil and gas from underground shale beds has fueled a new onshore U.S. energy boom.
It also has sparked concerns about impacts on the environment, including questions raised about the potential effects of fracking on groundwater.
Environmental groups also criticize oil shale production as at odds with efforts to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion that scientists blame for global climate change.
California is implementing a host of policies to cut its greenhouse emissions, including a carbon cap-and-trade program that it bills as a potential model for other states.
The issue came into sharp focus in California last month when Governor Jerry Brown, who has long touted his record as an environmentalist, said the state should consider fracking technology to develop its shale reserves as a way of reducing reliance on imported oil.
U.S. District Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose ruled that the federal government erred, and violated U.S. environmental law, in declining to conduct a full-fledged environmental impact study of its oil leasing for the Monterey Formation.
JUDGE FINDS RISKS 'COMPLETELY IGNORED'
Grewal held that BLM's analysis was flawed because it "did not adequately consider the development impact of hydraulic fracturing techniques ... when used in combination with technologies such as horizontal drilling."
"The potential risk for contamination from fracking, while unknown, is not so remote or speculative to be completely ignored," Grewal wrote.
But the judge stopped short of ordering the leases canceled, as sought by environmental groups. Instead, he ordered the parties to confer and either submit a joint plan of action if they can agree or prepare to argue their respective cases for a remedy if they cannot.
"In any event, it is clear from the order and the general requirements of the law that BLM cannot allow drilling on the leases until and unless it completes a more thorough environmental review," said Brendan Cummings, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, which brought the suit with the Sierra Club.
He hailed the decision as a milestone in efforts to seek greater scrutiny and regulation of fracking.
"It's the first federal court opinion we're aware of that explicitly holds that federal agencies have to analyze the environmental impacts of fracking when carrying out an oil and gas leasing program," Cummings told Reuters.
But oil company representatives played down the ruling's significance, saying the judge took issue only with the BLM process, not fracking as a method of recovering oil.
"There are many hurdles that producers have to go through, and oftentimes they add delay and cost to energy production," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the refinery group Western States Petroleum Association.
"Hopefully the court will ultimately allow the lease to go forward and production to take place," he said.
Cumming said the outcome would likely have implications for a more recent and much larger lease sale of 18,000 acres for oil and gas development in the same general region, which the BLM approved under the same "flawed analysis."
He said the BLM should rescind those leases and "conduct the proper environmental review" or face more court challenges
by seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:35 pm
Exxon Has Solution to Arkansas Oil Now in Wetlands: Paper Towels
by Abby Zimet
From the group Tar Sands Blockade, new photos and video from the Arkansas spill showing a scene so bad it's surreal: Oil is now in nearby Lake Conway's wetlands, either intentionally diverted by Exxon to keep it out of sight and away from the (few members of the) media (who have managed to sneak into the area), or naturally drained there from the company's power washing of streets and sidewalks. There is nothing quite like the sight of their solution: a ragged mess of paper towels, specially designed to soak up oil but not water, laid hopefully on the putrid ground.
Here is the water in Tuckerman, Arkansas today.
Last week, solutions at work.
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 14, 2013 1:30 am
Published on Saturday, April 13, 2013 by DeSmogBlog.com
OOPS, Inc.: Keystone XL, Arkansas Hire Notorious Private Contractor To "Clean-Up" Tar Sands Spills
Same firm tied to Exxon Valdez spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, Kalamazoo River spill, and Hurricane Sandy
by Steve Horn
Arkansas' Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has contracted out the "independent analysis of the cleanup" of the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill to Witt O'Brien's, a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups, a DeSmogBlog investigation reveals.
Exxon clean-up efforts in Arkansas include the use of paper towels (Photo: JNL-Live Radikal Media / Tar Sands Blockaden via Flickr / Creative Commons License)
At his April 10 press conference about the Mayflower spill response, AG McDaniel confirmed that Exxon had turned over 12,500 pages of documents to his office resulting from a subpoena related to Exxon's response to the March 29 Pegasus disaster. A 22-foot gash in the 65-year-old pipeline spewed over 500,000 gallons of tar sands dilbit through the streets of Mayflower, AR.
McDaniel also provided the media with a presser explaining that his office had "retained the assistance of Witt O’Brien’s, a firm whose experts will immediately begin an independent analysis of the cleanup process."
O'Brien's has had its hands in the botched clean-up efforts of almost every high-profile oil spill disaster in recent U.S. history, including the Exxon Valdez spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the Enbridge tar sands pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River, and Hurricane Sandy.
Witt O'Brien's describes itself as a "global leader in preparedness, crisis management and disaster response and recovery with the depth of experience and capability to provide services across the crisis and disaster life cycle."
But the firm's actual performance record isn't quite so glowing. O'Brien's has had its hands in the botched clean-up efforts of almost every high-profile oil spill disaster in recent U.S. history, including the Exxon Valdez spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, the Enbridge tar sands pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River, and Hurricane Sandy.
Most troubling of all, Witt O'Brien's won a "$300k+ contract to develop a Canadian-US compliant Oil Spill Emergency Response Plan for TransCanada’s Keystone Oil Pipeline Project" in Aug. 2008.
Thus, if the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline inevitably suffered a major spill, Witt O'Brien's would presumably handle the cleanup. That should worry everyone along the proposed KXL route.
From OOPS, Inc. to Witt O'Brien's
In Dec. 2012, Witt Associates merged with O’Brien’s Response Management to form Witt O’Brien’s. The merger at-large is owned by Seacor Holdings.
O'Brien's was formed in the early 1980s by Jim O'Brien - a former U.S. Coast Guard officer - as O'Brien Oil Pollution Service, otherwise known by OOPS, Inc. That's not a joke, it was their actual name.
OOPs, Inc. was acquired by Seacor Holdings Inc. under the auspices of Seacor Environmental Services division in 1997, later renamed The O'Brien's Group (TOG). TOG was later re-named O’Brien’s Response Management Inc. in Oct. 2008.
Importantly, in Dec. 2009, O'Brien's acquired a powerful public relations spin machine wing, as its former website explains:
In December of 2009, O’Brien’s completed the successful acquisition of PIER (Public Information Emergency Response) Systems Inc., a crisis communications company that has developed the PIER software application, an all-in-one, web-based solution for communications management, public relations, media monitoring, employee notification, and business continuity.
Witt Associates, meanwhile, was founded by James Witt, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Bill Clinton who also served Gov. Clinton in Arkansas as head of the state's Office of Emergency Services. He started Witt Associates upon leaving his Clinton Administration post.
Oil and Gas Industry Ties Run Deep at Witt O'Brien's
Many of Witt O'Brien's clients are oil and gas industry giants and many of its employees formerly worked for the industry.
Tim O'Leary, its Vice President of Communications, formerly worked for Shell Oil's Media Relations and Crisis Management team. Don Costanzo, Senior Vice President Business Applications at Witt O'Brien's, formerly had a client list that included BP, ExxonMobil and Shell during his time spent as head of Renfroe & Company, according to his LinkedIn page.
Steve Candito, President and CEO of National Response Corporation (NRC), is a former ExxonMobil employee, serving as a marine engineer aboard its domestic tanker fleet from 1980-1985. He is a "member of the Boards of Directors of various SEACOR Environmental Services entities (which owns Witt O'Brien's)," according to his biographical sketch on the NRC webpage.
A March 2011 version of the O'Brien's Response Management website shows a client list including ExxonMobil, BP and Transocean (of Deepwater Horizon infamy), ConocoPhillips and pipeline industry giant Kinder Morgan.
One of Witt Associates' former clients is ICF International, where Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz sits on ICF's Board of Directors. ICF was one of the three oil and gas industry-tied consulting firms contracted out by the U.S. State Department on behalf of TransCanada to conduct the Keystone XL Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
Enbridge Kalamazoo River Tar Sands Pipeline Spill: A Literal Cover-Up
In July 2010, one of Enbridge's tar sands pipelines spilled over 1 million gallons of tar sands dilbit into the Kalamazoo River in an incident now known by close observers as the "dilbit disaster," the worst inland pipeline spill in U.S. history.
O'Brien's was hired for cleanup duties. A whistleblower later revealed that O'Brien's engaged in a literal cover-up on behalf of Enbridge.
An excerpt from the three-part investigation by NRDC's OnEarth magazine explains it in a nutshell:
On...September 6, [2010], Jason Buford, a representative from O’Brien’s Response Management...called a meeting...[and] said that, if they were going to meet deadline now, they needed to stop wasting time with small oil-clogged areas. He directed [a] crew to go through the woods, thin out oily debris, and mix mud into the remaining oil so that the EPA would clear the site.
The whistleblower was fired when he spoke out against O'Brien's demands to cover up oil and threatened to go to the press and government authorities.
The whistleblower was fired when he spoke out against O'Brien's demands to cover up oil and threatened to go to the press and government authorities.
“I want you to spread out the oil,” the whistleblower's attorney said to OnEarth in explaining O'Brien's demands in April 2012. “Rake it into the soil. Cover it with grass. Cover it with leaves. I want you to hide it -- to dupe the EPA and the (Michigan Department of Natural Resources).”
BP Deepwater Horizon Dispersant Cover-Up and Exxon Valdez
Witt O'Brien's was also involved in the cleanup effort for the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, as well as for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the second worst in U.S. history.
Seacor Environmental Services, which owns Witt O'Brien's, was one of the parties responsible for spraying the toxic chemical oil dispersant Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, according to an Aug. 2010 story in The Wall Street Journal.
Anne Landman, writing for PR Watch, explained that Corexit does not actually clean up oceanic spills.
BP's Web site gives the impression that dispersants "clean and control" ocean oil spills by putting the oil in a state where "it becomes a feast for the naturally-occurring microbes that inhabit the ocean." But dispersants do not clean the water, nor do they remove oil at all, but rather re-arrange where it exists, and change where it goes.
BP applied roughly 1.1. million gallons of surface dispersant in the Gulf and over 720,000 gallons of subsea dispersant. It is a "science experiment" - as Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network put it - whose impacts are still unknown on water, on water-based animals, and on water-based animals when converted into consumable food.
Corexit was also applied during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, a disaster response O'Brien's helped oversee, according to its website.
O'Brien's also helped with the damage control in the form of PR spin for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Brad Johnson, then writing for Think Progress, explained that Witt O'Brien's PIER Systems was "being used by Unified Command for media and public information management” during the Deepwater Horizon spill in an article titled, "BP’s Secret Army Of Oil Disaster Contractors." BP was listed as one of PIER's clients in a 2008 version of its website.
Former Bush Administration FEMA head of External Affairs, John "Pat" Philbin, got a gig as Senior VP of PIER upon leaving FEMA.
Jeb Bush in the Fray
In Sept. 2011, Jeb Bush - brother of former President George W. Bush and former Republican Governor of Florida - joined the O'Brien's team.
"Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, through his firm Old Rhodes Holdings LLC, and O’Brien’s Response Management (O’Brien’s), a wholly owned subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CKH), today announced a strategic partnership to facilitate O’Brien’s growth into new markets," explained an O'Brien's press release.
George W. Bush's first FEMA Director, Joe Allbaugh, called for privatization of FEMA's functions.
"Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level," he once said. "We must restore the predominant role of State and local response to most disasters."
2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also called for the full-privatization of FEMA during one of the presidential debates.
Crisis Communications and Keystone XL: Spill Cleanup or Image Cleanup?
Witt O'Brien's has been tasked by TransCanada to oversee spill response for its prospective Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that will bring the dilbit from Alberta to Port Arthur, TX, after which it will be placed on the global export market.
Yet its track record in Valdez, the Gulf of Mexico, Kalamazoo and now in Arkansas indicates that O'Brien's is more interested in PR damage control than spill cleanup. Crisis management is a key aspect of Witt O'Brien's client offerings, and its spin machine is currenly likely working just as hard as its actual spill clean-up team.
With Lake Conway and its accompanying cove now contaminated with tar sands dilbit, 22 households evacuated in Mayflower, it's no wonder ExxonMobil is running the show both by land and by air there. Yet, Attorney General McDaniel is taking spill cleanup advice from a firm known for cover-up and not clean-up, all under the guise of a robust independent investigation of Exxon.
This can't end well, and begs the unpleasant question as to whether the same situation can be expected for the Keystone XL.
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