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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

• 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.
  • pico303 14y ago
    A couple of problems. You didn't really address any of these issues. Apparently to you dumping a little oil in a ditch or some tar in a bog is equivalent to dumping millions of galleons into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Did you know that with all those beautiful stories of Exxon and others cleaning up oil spills, washing off baby ducks and sea lions, that most of them die? A 1996 study by UC Davis found that in the years following an oil spill in 1990, only 10% of pelicans that were "saved" from the spill survived beyond two years (while nearly 100% of a control group were still alive)? Furthermore, You probably need a dictionary for Christmas. I didn't even suggest you were something as harsh as irresposible. My use of the word "criminal" in no way implicates you as a criminal, nor implies an illegal act. "Criminal" in this context is a synonym for shameful or disgraceful. So cool your jets. I'm not sure what you're arguing beyond that. Somehow a couple of anecdotes makes for proof that we're hard on oil companies? We nowhere near make it painful on the oil industry. A company reporting billions in pure profit doesn't feel anything from a $20m fine. And how does that $20m compare to the $10-50 billion the oil industry got in subsidies alone that year? Looks more and more like a slap on the wrist to me. Some poor schlub got 16 years for leaking 6000 barrels, but no one at BP or Haliburton--knowingly installing bad blowout valves and other cost-cutting measures--did any jail time for loosing almost 5 million barrels into the Gulf? There's much more evidence for leniency on our part than accountability. I'm just so tired of no one wanting to do better in this country. Be it guns, energy, education, poverty: it's everyone else's problem, it's just the way it is, and there's nothing we can do about it. I guess we're the Not-So-Greatest Generation.