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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 (pe

by 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.
- jws 14y ago
  3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year, or 2% of what consumers were leaking from their gas tanks until just a few years ago. A drop in a bucket is .000625%, so I can't use that phrase and "two thousand drops in a bucket" doesn't have quite the right ring… criminal? You publicly defame me as a criminal‽ Maybe you meant to say irresponsible or something similar that doesn't so directly involve libel laws. Let's save criminal for where it belongs, like BP's Deepwater Horizon spill. I reject your assertion: we don't, as a country, do a very good job of holding oil companies responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their equipment unless you can provide evidence. The EPA oversees cleanups which are notoriously expensive, deterring pipeline companies from accepting leaks as a cost of doing business. (The one I'm familiar with cost about $1000/gallon of leaked oil (mostly to experts and analysts, not so much to the guy with the shovel and buckets). Small leak, probably makes it on the high side per gallon.) For another data point, when BP blew out some lines in Alaska in 2006 they spilled about 6000 barrels and were ultimately fined $20M. I'd like that fine to be higher, 20 times the value of the spilled product seems low. Forgive a paragraph where I read about the Alaskan Pipeline, it's Saturday, the official day of HN meanderings: I wanted to put a number about what percent of the Trans Alaskan pipeline oil leaks out, but I'm not finding a catalog of spills. From 1977 to 2010 it moved 16 billion barrels of oil, but I'm not finding the other half. There is a list at wikipedia, but it misses the 2006 BP spill, so I don't trust it to be complete. In 1978 someone blew a hole in the pipeline and leaked 16000 barrels, in 2001 some drunken numbnut with a rifle shot a hole in a weld and leaked 6000 barrels. He got 16 years in jail and was sentenced to pay $17M for the cleanup. I'm guessing he's still working that off. Unless they find more oil, or figure out how to make the pipeline work at lower than designed flow rates, the company that owns it has to remove all traces of the pipeline. Current projections suggest 2032 as the year for that decision. Back on topic: • Keep leaks to a minimum, but don't panic. • Oil seeps are natural phenomena. The planet has survived millions of years with them. • A pipeline leak screws up the local environment, but can be cleaned, and make sure to fine the pipeline folk enough that they don't want it to happen. • Trucking the oil instead of using pipelines would be worse for the environment (I boldly propose without bothering to check the data). • You know that car owners and farmers used to use their used motor oil as weed killer, right? Kept the weeds in the ditch down by dumping the oil in the drainage ditch. We have survived that, which was probably several times more oil per year than pipeline leaks. Heck I drove a Ford that leaked oil faster than my share of global pipeline leaks. On barely related good news: The local gas company is finally addressing the methane leak they've had going in my yard for two years. It got big enough to attract their attention.

by jws 14y ago

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.
jws 14y ago
3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year, or 2% of what consumers were leaking from their gas tanks until just a few years ago. A drop in a bucket is .000625%, so I can't use that phrase and "two thousand drops in a bucket" doesn't have quite the right ring… criminal? You publicly defame me as a criminal‽ Maybe you meant to say irresponsible or something similar that doesn't so directly involve libel laws. Let's save criminal for where it belongs, like BP's Deepwater Horizon spill. I reject your assertion: we don't, as a country, do a very good job of holding oil companies responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their equipment unless you can provide evidence. The EPA oversees cleanups which are notoriously expensive, deterring pipeline companies from accepting leaks as a cost of doing business. (The one I'm familiar with cost about $1000/gallon of leaked oil (mostly to experts and analysts, not so much to the guy with the shovel and buckets). Small leak, probably makes it on the high side per gallon.) For another data point, when BP blew out some lines in Alaska in 2006 they spilled about 6000 barrels and were ultimately fined $20M. I'd like that fine to be higher, 20 times the value of the spilled product seems low. Forgive a paragraph where I read about the Alaskan Pipeline, it's Saturday, the official day of HN meanderings: I wanted to put a number about what percent of the Trans Alaskan pipeline oil leaks out, but I'm not finding a catalog of spills. From 1977 to 2010 it moved 16 billion barrels of oil, but I'm not finding the other half. There is a list at wikipedia, but it misses the 2006 BP spill, so I don't trust it to be complete. In 1978 someone blew a hole in the pipeline and leaked 16000 barrels, in 2001 some drunken numbnut with a rifle shot a hole in a weld and leaked 6000 barrels. He got 16 years in jail and was sentenced to pay $17M for the cleanup. I'm guessing he's still working that off. Unless they find more oil, or figure out how to make the pipeline work at lower than designed flow rates, the company that owns it has to remove all traces of the pipeline. Current projections suggest 2032 as the year for that decision. Back on topic: • Keep leaks to a minimum, but don't panic. • Oil seeps are natural phenomena. The planet has survived millions of years with them. • A pipeline leak screws up the local environment, but can be cleaned, and make sure to fine the pipeline folk enough that they don't want it to happen. • Trucking the oil instead of using pipelines would be worse for the environment (I boldly propose without bothering to check the data). • You know that car owners and farmers used to use their used motor oil as weed killer, right? Kept the weeds in the ditch down by dumping the oil in the drainage ditch. We have survived that, which was probably several times more oil per year than pipeline leaks. Heck I drove a Ford that leaked oil faster than my share of global pipeline leaks. On barely related good news: The local gas company is finally addressing the methane leak they've had going in my yard for two years. It got big enough to attract their attention.