14 ms·

13 Spills. 30 Days. Nearly 1.2 Million Toxic Gallons

22 points by zoowar 14y ago

owenfi 14y ago
Add another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvbcQHbgPwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvbcQHbgPwE
- TheCapn 14y ago
  And another: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/04/11/sk-truck-crash.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/04/11/... Seems this is more frequent then people are aware.
vosper 14y ago
I find this a little odd - firstly, by far the largest volume of oil in the chart is the theft of 60,000 barrels per day reported by Shell from their pipeline in Nigeria. But theft != spill - presumably the oil was used for the same kinds of things it's normally used for, and wasn't tipped on the ground. Secondly, the volume of the Shell thefts alone is 2.5m gallons per day, so either it wasn't actually added into the total (so why mention it?) or they got their math wrong. Finally, 1.2m gallons sure seems like a lot, until you read that it's 2 Olympic swimming pools. Given the amount of oil processed around the world in a month I'm surprised we don't spill more of it. BTW, Google never ceases to amaze me - I never expected it to understand "1185000 gallons in barrels of oil".
- kevinthew 14y ago
  Another thing I'd like to point out is how people confuse flavors of crude oil and crude oil itself. Tar sands/bitumen/whatever you want to call it is crude oil, it's just really viscous, really dirty crude oil. Condensate generally means crude oil in this situation as well (that is, if it's coming straight out of the ground and being sent to a refinery).
- shabble 14y ago
  The actual quote was "after suffering a reported theft of 60,000 barrels of oil per day from its Nembe Creek Trunkline pipeline, Shell Nigeria shuts off the pipe for 9 days to repair damage." which to me sounds like damage caused by the thefts is causing (some undefined amount) of leakage/wastage, that they're trying to fix. If they're including the full 60k barrel as 'spillage' in their graphs then it's definitely somewhat disingenuous, as you say.
  - vosper 14y ago
    That's a good point. I did a little Googling for news on the matter, and it seems like the thefts were made by drilling holes in the pipeline [1], and the amount stolen accounts for almost half of the 150,000 barrels-per-day capacity of the pipeline. Shell shut the pipeline down both due to the leaks and to the monetary losses ($100m in a week) incurred. So, I'm not sure - it seems pretty clear that the 60,000 barrels a day was theft, and not a spill, but presumably there's leakage after clandestinely drilling holes in high pressure oil lines. I don't know if pipeline theft should be included in a list of oil industry screw-ups, unless you want to expand the term to include thieves and black-marketeers (not that Shell are saints in the Niger Delta, there's almost certainly blood on their hands [2]) [1] http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipeline-in-nigeria/1631767.html http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipe... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
jws 14y ago
Put some numbers on it! It will look sciencey! Math does not work when applied to the data. Most of the volume is from 60000 barrels stolen from pipelines (people drilling holes in the pipes and catching in buckets), undoubtedly some portion spilled. That is almost 3,000,000 gallons. The rest of the data is lost in the fudge factor that brings that down. (Two of the spill events are from about 10 gallons each, probably should list every car accident that splits a gas tank.) 1.2 million gallons sounds like a lot. In the US we've recently added vapor recovery devices to our cars to condense the gasoline out of the air in the tank. That keeps ~1 gallon per car per year out of the environment. The equivalent of making all of these spills every two days, but it is invisible. (That's why you may have stopped seeing vapor recovery nozzles at the filling station, your car is doing the work now.)
- pico303 14y ago
  Dismissed like an industry spokesman! These pipelines are ecologically dangerous, primarily because (a) they are aging (many are over 50 years old) and (b) we don't, as a country, do a very good job of holding oil companies responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their equipment. Oil is a dirty business, literally, and just outright dismissing spills as little more than a numbers problem is as criminal as exploiting the problem for a cheap headline. Check out this article on the recent spill in Arkansas: http://www.apr.org/post/arkansas-oil-spill-sheds-light-aging-pipeline-system http://www.apr.org/post/arkansas-oil-spill-sheds-light-aging... "According to federal statistics, they have on average 280 significant spills a year...Federal data show that on average over the past decade, nearly 3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year." This is for the US only. That's a considerable problem that should be addressed. You may be willing to accept a damaged environment and write off spilled oil as "theft" (which I doubt is a big problem in the US). I think we should be doing everything possible to keep our planet clean and safe, even if it costs a few extra dollars.
  - vosper 14y ago
    Is it a considerable problem, though? It seems too simple to say "oil leak = bad!" - surely the smaller leaks in this report (particularly the American ones, like the train derailment) provoked a recovery and cleanup operation, and thus may have had only a minor environmental impact. It would be useful if there was some kind of score-card for determining the environmental impact of any given spill. I imagine it would be some combination of: - Volume of oil released during the "spilling" period (a tanker breaking up on the rocks is presumably worse than the same volume trickling out over a year) - The environment into which the leak occurred (leaks in the desert aren't as bad?) - Whether the spill provoked a response, and whether that was effective, for some measure of effective. I'd be interested to know if such a thing exists.
uvdiv 14y ago
13 Spills. 30 Days. Nearly 1.2 Million Toxic Gallons And $300 billion in economic wealth.

22 points by zoowar 14y ago

owenfi 14y ago

Add another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvbcQHbgPwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvbcQHbgPwE

TheCapn 14y ago
And another: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/04/11/sk-truck-crash.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2013/04/11/... Seems this is more frequent then people are aware.

vosper 14y ago

I find this a little odd - firstly, by far the largest volume of oil in the chart is the theft of 60,000 barrels per day reported by Shell from their pipeline in Nigeria. But theft != spill - presumably the oil was used for the same kinds of things it's normally used for, and wasn't tipped on the ground. Secondly, the volume of the Shell thefts alone is 2.5m gallons per day, so either it wasn't actually added into the total (so why mention it?) or they got their math wrong. Finally, 1.2m gallons sure seems like a lot, until you read that it's 2 Olympic swimming pools. Given the amount of oil processed around the world in a month I'm surprised we don't spill more of it. BTW, Google never ceases to amaze me - I never expected it to understand "1185000 gallons in barrels of oil".

kevinthew 14y ago
Another thing I'd like to point out is how people confuse flavors of crude oil and crude oil itself. Tar sands/bitumen/whatever you want to call it is crude oil, it's just really viscous, really dirty crude oil. Condensate generally means crude oil in this situation as well (that is, if it's coming straight out of the ground and being sent to a refinery).
shabble 14y ago
The actual quote was "after suffering a reported theft of 60,000 barrels of oil per day from its Nembe Creek Trunkline pipeline, Shell Nigeria shuts off the pipe for 9 days to repair damage." which to me sounds like damage caused by the thefts is causing (some undefined amount) of leakage/wastage, that they're trying to fix. If they're including the full 60k barrel as 'spillage' in their graphs then it's definitely somewhat disingenuous, as you say.
- vosper 14y ago
  That's a good point. I did a little Googling for news on the matter, and it seems like the thefts were made by drilling holes in the pipeline [1], and the amount stolen accounts for almost half of the 150,000 barrels-per-day capacity of the pipeline. Shell shut the pipeline down both due to the leaks and to the monetary losses ($100m in a week) incurred. So, I'm not sure - it seems pretty clear that the 60,000 barrels a day was theft, and not a spill, but presumably there's leakage after clandestinely drilling holes in high pressure oil lines. I don't know if pipeline theft should be included in a list of oil industry screw-ups, unless you want to expand the term to include thieves and black-marketeers (not that Shell are saints in the Niger Delta, there's almost certainly blood on their hands [2]) [1] http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipeline-in-nigeria/1631767.html http://www.voanews.com/content/shell-to-shut-down-major-pipe... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

jws 14y ago

Put some numbers on it! It will look sciencey! Math does not work when applied to the data. Most of the volume is from 60000 barrels stolen from pipelines (people drilling holes in the pipes and catching in buckets), undoubtedly some portion spilled. That is almost 3,000,000 gallons. The rest of the data is lost in the fudge factor that brings that down. (Two of the spill events are from about 10 gallons each, probably should list every car accident that splits a gas tank.) 1.2 million gallons sounds like a lot. In the US we've recently added vapor recovery devices to our cars to condense the gasoline out of the air in the tank. That keeps ~1 gallon per car per year out of the environment. The equivalent of making all of these spills every two days, but it is invisible. (That's why you may have stopped seeing vapor recovery nozzles at the filling station, your car is doing the work now.)

pico303 14y ago
Dismissed like an industry spokesman! These pipelines are ecologically dangerous, primarily because (a) they are aging (many are over 50 years old) and (b) we don't, as a country, do a very good job of holding oil companies responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their equipment. Oil is a dirty business, literally, and just outright dismissing spills as little more than a numbers problem is as criminal as exploiting the problem for a cheap headline. Check out this article on the recent spill in Arkansas: http://www.apr.org/post/arkansas-oil-spill-sheds-light-aging-pipeline-system http://www.apr.org/post/arkansas-oil-spill-sheds-light-aging... "According to federal statistics, they have on average 280 significant spills a year...Federal data show that on average over the past decade, nearly 3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year." This is for the US only. That's a considerable problem that should be addressed. You may be willing to accept a damaged environment and write off spilled oil as "theft" (which I doubt is a big problem in the US). I think we should be doing everything possible to keep our planet clean and safe, even if it costs a few extra dollars.
- vosper 14y ago
  Is it a considerable problem, though? It seems too simple to say "oil leak = bad!" - surely the smaller leaks in this report (particularly the American ones, like the train derailment) provoked a recovery and cleanup operation, and thus may have had only a minor environmental impact. It would be useful if there was some kind of score-card for determining the environmental impact of any given spill. I imagine it would be some combination of: - Volume of oil released during the "spilling" period (a tanker breaking up on the rocks is presumably worse than the same volume trickling out over a year) - The environment into which the leak occurred (leaks in the desert aren't as bad?) - Whether the spill provoked a response, and whether that was effective, for some measure of effective. I'd be interested to know if such a thing exists.

uvdiv 14y ago

13 Spills. 30 Days. Nearly 1.2 Million Toxic Gallons And $300 billion in economic wealth.