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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 i

by 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
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by vosper 14y ago

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

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