Photo Credit: Karen McCall/Greenpeace
April 3, 2013 |
This article was published in partnership with
GlobalPossibilities.org.
By
now, you already know that at least 84,000 gallons of crude spilled
from an ExxonMobil pipeline, swamping an Arkansas subdivision on Friday,
and causing the evacuation of 22 homes. In addition to the loss of
wildlife, damage to property, and environmental and human health hazards
posed by the spill, it may have implications for the Keystone XL
pipeline currently under consideration by the Obama administration.
There is a lot more to the story that's important to understand. Here are six crucial things.
1. Not Your Average Crude
InsideClimate News
reported
shortly after the spill that an Exxon official confirmed the pipeline
was "transporting a heavy form of crude from the Canadian tar sands
region." Specifically, it has been identified as Wabasca Heavy, Lisa
Song writes, "which is a type of diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from
Alberta's tar sands region" although you won't hear any Exxon folks
calling it tar sands.
Dilbit is some seriously nasty stuff. She
writes about a previous dilbit spill by Enbridge in Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010:
Dilbit
is a mixture of heavy bitumen and diluents--light hydrocarbons used to
thin the bitumen so it can flow through pipelines. While most
conventional crude oils will float on water, the bitumen began sinking
into the river as the diluents evaporated, leaving a sludge of submerged
oil that defied traditional cleanup methods. ...
Earlier
this month, the EPA ordered Enbridge, Inc., the Canadian company that
owns the pipeline, to dredge sunken oil from the riverbed. The cleanup
has cost more than $820 million to date and could top $1 billion once
the order is carried out.
The Arkansas
spill wasn't as big as the Michigan spill and it was farther from main
water bodies, but it's still serious business. If you want to know more
about how dangerous tar sands/dilbit can be, the
Dilbit Disaster is a must-read.
2. Not Your Average Pipeline
The
Pegasus pipeline running more than 850 miles between Patoka, Illinois
and Nederland, Texas, is 20 inches in diameter and was built in the
1940s to carry crude from Texas to Illinois. But in 2006 the flow was
reversed in order to carry Canadian tar sands to Texas. As Ben Jervey
wrote
for DeSmog blog, the flow was reversed to "help relieve the tar sands
crude bottleneck in Cushing, Oklahoma. (The same reason given by
proponents for the construction of Keystone XL.)"
The
pipeline was built to carry 65,000 barrels a day, but Exxon was allowed
to expand that to 95,000 barrels a day just a few years ago.
All
of these facts bring up some basic questions. What effect does a higher
capacity have on the pipeline? What effect does reversing the flow have
on the pipeline? And what effect does switching from conventional crude
to dilbit have on the pipeline, considering it was built to have a much
thinner crude flowing through it?
John H. Cushman Jr.
wrote for InsideClimate News:
...
seven years ago, when Exxon, the pipeline's operator, turned it into a
higher-volume line for diluted bitumen from Canada flowing under greater
pressure to refineries on the Gulf Coast, federal rules did not require
a new permit application or safety reviews, according to federal
officials.
"Our regulations
don't specify how much product a pipeline carries. There is no
regulation if they want to change the type of crude they carry," said
Damon Hill, a spokesman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration, a part of the Transportation Department. "As far as
reversing the flow of a pipeline, it is not a safety issue."
To
reverse the line that runs from Patoka, Ill. to Nederland, Tex.
required 240,000 man-hours of work on pump stations, valves, bypasses
and integrity tests, Exxon said when it opened the line.
But
only after the spill occurred did the agency step in with an order,
issued Tuesday, that clamps down on the Pegasus pipeline, for example by
limiting the pressure at which it may operate once it reopens. Noting
that the pipeline's flow was reversed in 2006 so that it could carry
Canadian tar sands crude 850 miles from Illinois to Texas, the agency's
corrective action order remarked that "a change in the direction of flow
can affect the hydraulic and stress demands on the pipeline."
3. Tax Exempt?
Who's
footing the bill for the cleanup? The government has an Oil Spill
Liability Trust Fund that companies which transport oil must pay into.
But, as it turns out, the bitumen that Exxon was transporting in its
pipeline isn't oil by government standards. Erin O'Sullivan
writes for Oil Change International:
In
a January 2011 memorandum, the IRS determined that to generate revenues
for the oil spill trust fund, Congress only intended to tax
conventional crude, and not tar sands or other unconventional oils. This
exemption remains to this day, even though the United States moves
billions of gallons of tar sands crude through its pipeline system every
year. The trust fund is liable for tar sands oil spill cleanups without
collecting any revenue from tar sands transport. If the fund goes
broke, the American taxpayer foots the cleanup bill.
Keep this in mind as Exxon tries to wiggle out of connecting the contents of its pipeline with tar sands.
4. No Media Access
It
feels like BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster all over again when it comes
to media access. Lisa Song reported that the command center for cleanup
is tightly controlled by Exxon, with even the parking lot off limits
and guarded by security. She
wrote:
The
stakes are high and Exxon is running the show here, with federal
agencies so far publicly invisible. The phone number of the command
center in Mayflower goes to an ExxonMobil answering service based in
Texas, and each day it is Exxon that distributes a unified command press
release--which contains the logos of Exxon, Faulkner County and the
city of Mayflower--with official updates on the progress of the cleanup.
...
A request for a media
tour of the spill site today was turned down by an Exxon spokesperson,
who emerged from the command center to speak with a reporter at the
gate. All areas being cleaned up so far have also been off limits. There
is no central location where members of the media can gather to ask
questions.
5. Under Investigation
Exxon
may be feeling a little bit of heat as the Pipeline and Hazardous
Materials Safety Administration has ordered a corrective action, which
puts the broken pipeline under lockdown for the time being (pretty much a
no-brainer). Jeannie Nuss
reported
for the AP that, "the order signed by Jeffrey Wiese, associate
administrator for pipeline safety, says 'continued operation of the
Pegasus Pipeline would be hazardous to life, property, and the
environment.'"
But that's not all. She
writes:
The
federal agency's order comes as Arkansas' attorney general promised a
state investigation into the cause and impact of the spill and other
officials say they plan to ask Exxon to move the Pegasus pipeline to
protect drinking water.
"There
are many questions and concerns remaining as to the long-term impacts,
environmental or otherwise, from this spill," Arkansas Attorney General
Dustin McDaniel wrote to ExxonMobil executives Tuesday. He also asked
ExxonMobil to preserve records pending his investigation.
6. Effects on Keystone XL
So,
how is this going to affect decisions about the Keystone XL pipeline?
Those who have been against the pipeline because of its environmental
risks have new fodder. Others who were previously in favor or
indifferent may have second thoughts, especially considering that the
Pegasus pipeline capacity was only about a tenth of what the Keystone XL
would carry.
Any pipeline poses risks, but tar sands
pipelines pose even more risks than conventional oil. "TransCanada's
first Keystone pipeline leaked 12 times in its first 12 months," wrote
Sierra Club's Michael Brune. "Because tar sands must be pumped at higher
pressures and temperatures than conventional oil, it corrodes pipes
faster."
Just days before the Arkansas spill, a
coalition of environmental groups, led by the National Wildlife
Federation, as well as landowners, and others
filed a petition
with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the
EPA, calling on them to enact stronger safety regulations for pipelines
carrying tar sands oil. The petition may well pick up more backers in
the spill's aftermath.
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