When oil and money mix

This is an extremely sobering and must read look from the New York Times at the impact of oil and money on the people living in North Dakota.

We have a choice - Do we move towards a clean, safe, and healthy future or do we continue to let the corrosive mix of oil and money pollute our water, contaminate our land, control our politics, and ruin the lives of the people who happen to live near oil and gas drilling fields?

It was the 11th blowout since 2006 at a North Dakota well operated by Continental Resources, the most prolific producer in the booming Bakken oil patch. Spewing some 173,250 gallons of potential pollutants, the eruption, undisclosed at the time, was serious enough to bring the Oklahoma-based company's chairman and chief executive, Harold G. Hamm, to the remote scene.

It was not the first or most catastrophic blowout visited by Mr. Hamm, a sharecropper's son who became the wealthiest oilman in America and energy adviser to Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign. Two years earlier, a towering derrick in Golden Valley County had erupted into flames and toppled, leaving three workers badly burned. "I was a human torch," said the driller, Andrew J. Rohr.

Blowouts represent the riskiest failure in the oil business. Yet, despite these serious injuries and some 115,000 gallons spilled in those first 10 blowouts, the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which regulates the drilling and production of oil and gas, did not penalize Continental until the 11th.

This is just the start of a major article looking at the results of lax enforcement of safety regulations in the oil fields of North Dakota.

[NY Times]

Oil Spill in Thailand

Crude oil has blanketed water and beaches at a Thai vacation spot after an offshore pipeline leaked an estimated 13,200 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Thailand.

The spill occurred about 12 miles off the coast of Rayong, Thailand, and reached Ao Prao beach on the island of Koh Samet. About 1,900 feet of white sandy beach was covered in oil. [Climate Progress]

CREDIT: Credit: AP

CREDIT: Shuttershock

Kalamazoo River Oil Spill

Preventable safety blunders by the pipeline operator Enbridge and lax federal regulation led to the disastrous 2010 rupture and oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday. 

Corrosion and cracks overlapped in many areas of the pipeline, but the company failed to consider the problem in safety evaluations, it said. The pipeline spewed 843,000 gallons of oil sands crude into the river, soiling 35 miles of wetlands and waterways and sickening 320 people and nearly 4,000 animals. 

The board voted unanimously to accept the findings and recommendations of its investigators, which include revising the federal pipeline safety agency's rules on identifying and fixing cracks, conducting a comprehensive inspection of Enbridge's pipeline management program and requiring operators to train first responders in best practices for responding to spills.

Major oil pipeline spills in Alberta

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline running from Alberta's tar sands south to Nebraska and Texas continues to stay in the public eye. 

But this week it was reported that over the past few months, a million liters (quarter million gallons) of oil from several pipelines have spilled in Alberta. Canada's The Star reported on Wednesday that cleanup crews are working to prevent contamination from the three major oil spills:

The latest spill occurred earlier this week in northeastern Alberta near the town of Elk Point, where Enbridge confirmed a spill of about 230,000 liters through its pumping station on the Athabasca pipeline.  The biggest incident was earlier this month near Red Deer and Sundre in central Alberta, where 475,000 liters of oil from Plains Midstream Canada leaked, some of it spilling into the Red Deer River.

This is not the first time the Canadian tar sands giant, Enbridge, has been involved with an oil spill. In July 2010 one of its pipelines ruptured in Marshall, Michigan and spilled an estimated 819,000 gallons.

Even proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline see these incidences as worrisome, and confidence in the tar sands extraction and transportation throughout Canada has clearly been shaken. 

Pipeline News - Canadian Pipelines coming to New England

Crews prepare a boom on the Gleniffer reservoir to stop oil from a pipeline leak near Sundre, Alta., on Friday, June 8, 2012.

Three large Canadian oil spills over the past 30 days have increased concern over pipeline safety here, just as the government and the Canadian petroleum industry are trying to drum up support for a series of new pipeline projects. [Wall Street Journal] [CTV.CA] [http://bit.ly/NVhGZb]

Environmental groups in Maine and Vermont are raising an alarm about the potential for tar sands oil to be piped across northern New England. [Associated Press]

Shell Oil spill may be in Exxon Valdez category

Satellite images of Nigeria's coastline show the new Shell oil spill covering a 356-square-mile patch of ocean.

The spill looks like it might be in the Exxon Valdez ballpark, underscoring the risks of a new deepwater oil-gathering technique that's coming soon to the Gulf of Mexico.

"The significance here is the technology they're using," said John Amos of the environmental watchdog group Skytruth. "It's a whole new source of potentially major oil spills."

The spill occurred Dec. 20 at Shell's Bonga deepwater facility, prompting an immediate temporary closure of the oil field. Shell estimated that up to 40,000 barrels of oil — about 7 million gallons, compared to 11 million gallons for the Exxon Valdez — leaked.

Another Pipeline Leak

Colorado officials fear that vast amounts of petroleum have been leaking into the South Platte River from a broken pipeline at a refinery operated by tar sands producer Suncor.

The oily black sludge that's been seeping into the Sand Creek waterway is a gasoline-like substance containing benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, the EPA confirmed.

The confirmation only deepens the worst fears of environmental advocates concerned that the contamination of Sand Creek, a tributary of the South Platte River, could put the health hundreds of thousands of metro area residents at-risk.

"When you have a spill in a small spot that's potentially drifting down into a major river, you're talking about dozens of ditches, thousands of acres of farmland and even some municipal water supply sources that could be affected," said Bart Miller, the water program director at Boulder's Western Resource Advocates.

"There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on this as a water source."

Colorado state health officials fear that a broken underground pipe that leads to a tank at a Suncor Energy refinery caused the leak of petroleum in Commerce City.

Hazardous Waste Corrective Action Unit supervisor Walter Avramenko says they're concerned because the reported break at the refinery is about a half-mile away from where an oily substance began seeping into Sand Creek earlier this week. 


KDVR News Report

Another BP Spill - this time in Alaska

Reuters reports:

BP said on Monday that a pipeline at its Lisburne field, ruptured during testing and spilled a mixture of methanol and oily water onto the tundra. 

The London-based company has a long history of oil spills at its Alaskan pipelines — accidents which have hurt its public image in the U.S., where around 40 percent of its assets are based.

That "history" includes the infamous 2006 Prudhoe Bay incident when 267,000 gallons (~6400 barrels) of oil and chemical leaked from unmonitored, corroded pipeline (pictured above).   The EPA reported:

• • From 1993 to 1995, Doyon Drilling employees illegally discharged waste oil and hazardous substances by injecting them down the outer rim, or annuli, of the oil wells. BPXA failed to report the illegal injections as soon as it learned of the conduct, in violation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. The  illegally injected wastes included paint thinner and toxic solvents containing lead and chemicals such as benzene, toluene and methylene chloride.
  
  
  
• According to data compiled from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation spill database,1.3 million gallons of toxic substances were spilled between 1996 and 2000.
• The November 29, 2010 Prudhoe Bay spill in which 46,000 gallons leaked.

BP has an equally disturbing track record in the Gulf of Mexico:

• An Associated Press investigation in 2010 revealed 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf, many of which are poorly sealed.
• And of course the infamous Deepwater Horizon Spill, where nearly 5 million barrels (~210 million gallons) of oil spewed into the ocean.

This Saturday's spill emphasizes once again that BP needs to take drastic measures to cleanup their operations and that an oil-laden economy cannot be our future.  – Tyce Herrman

US closes TransCanada Keystone pipeline

After a series of oil spills, twelve in the last twelve months and the second spill in May, the United States Department of Transportation has ordered the TransCanada Corporation to suspend operation of its one-year-old Keystone 1 pipeline, which carries oil extracted from oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta to the United States. The so-called "corrective action order" was issued by the department's Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

"Effective immediately, this order prevents TransCanada from restarting operations on their Keystone crude oil pipeline until P.H.M.S.A. is satisfied with the ongoing repairs and is confident that all immediate safety concerns have been addressed," the agency said. It issued the order in response to two incidents in May involving oil leaks from small-diameter pump-station pipe fittings.

Transcanada's Keystone1 is under particular scrutiny because the company has applied to build and operate a much larger pipeline, the Keystone XL, which will run from Canada all the way to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. That pipeline will pass under some of the Midwest's most productive farmland and through its major aquifer.

Just last month, the Keystone 1 pipeline suffered two leaks, according to the Sierra Club, one of which involved over 10,000 gallons of oil. Leaks could prove dangerous and economically damaging.

Environmental experts have raised concerns about the possibilities of leaks from Keystone XL, in part because TransCanada has in the past been granted waivers that effectively allow it to use thinner steel than would normally be required in the United States. They add that the company's s pipelines are particularly vulnerable because oil from tar sands is more corrosive than conventional oil and is pumped under higher pressures and temperatures.

"I find that the continued operation of the pipeline without corrective measures would be hazardous to life, property and the environment," Jeffrey Wiese, an administrator at the department, wrote in issuing the order.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to decide whether to approve the Keystone XL project and is expected to render her opinion by the end of the year. In reaching a decision, she will have to weigh both energy and environmental concerns to determine whether the pipeline is in the national interest.

While oil from Canada's oil sands is dependable fuel from a friendly neighbor, it comes with environmental costs because extracting oil from oil sands results in heavy carbon dioxide emissions and can destroy ecosystems.

800,000 gallon oil spill in Michigan

The New York Times reported that crews were working Tuesday to contain and clean up more than 800,000 gallons of oil that poured into a creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan, coating wildlife. Battle Creek and Emmett Township authorities warned residents about the strong odor from the oil, which leaked Monday from a pipeline that carries about eight million gallons of oil a day from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline company, Enbridge Energy Partners, said the oil spilled into Talmadge Creek. As of Tuesday afternoon, oil was reported in about 16 miles of the Kalamazoo River downstream of the spill. Representative Mark Schauer, Democrat of Michigan, called the spill a "public health crisis," and said he planned to hold hearings to examine the response. The spill's cause is under investigation.