Washington Post -- Exxon Mobil pipeline leaks ‘a few thousand’ barrels of crude oil in Arkansas .....................
March 31, 2013
Exxon Mobil pipeline leaks ‘a few thousand’ barrels of crude oil in Arkansas
By Steven Mufson
Exxon Mobil said that one of its pipelines leaked “a few thousand” barrels of crude oil near Mayflower, Ark., prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is still awaiting approval from the State Department.
The Exxon Mobil pipeline breach took place late Friday, the company said, in the 20-inch diameter, 95,000 barrel-a-day Pegasus pipeline, which originates in Patoka, Ill. and carries crude oil to the Texas gulf coast, the country’s main refining center. Mayflower is about 25 miles north of Little Rock.
The pipeline, which was built in the 1940s and recently expanded, was carrying low quality Wabasca Heavy crude oil from Alberta, said Exxon Mobil spokesman Alan T. Jeffers. According to the authoritative Crude Monitor web site, Wabasca Heavy is a blend of oil produced in the Athabasca region where the oil sands are located.
An existing Keystone pipeline carries crude oil that comes from the oil sands deposits in Alberta to Patoka, Ill., though Exxon Mobil’s Jeffers said he did not know if this batch of crude oil came from the Keystone line.
Many critics of the Keystone pipelines say that corrosion risks are greater in pipelines carrying low quality, bitumen-lade crude from the oil sands.
“This latest pipeline incident is a troubling reminder that oil companies still have not proven that they can safely transport Canadian tar sands oil across the United States without creating risks to our citizens and our environment,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.
TransCanada, owner of the Keystone pipeline system, has said that the new pipeline would be far safer than any other part of the nation’s 2.6 million miles of oil, gas and chemical pipelines.
The Environmental Protection Agency declared the Arkansas leak a “major spill,” a label put on any spill of 250 barrels or more. Exxon Mobil said it was preparing for a spill of up to 10,000 barrels, though it said that the spill estimate was likely to end up lower than that.
The company and other responders were battling to keep the crude oil, which leaked onto land in a Mayflower neighborhood, from leaking into the nearby Lake Conway, a popular game fishing spot. Cleanup crews have deployed 3,600 feet of boom near the lake as a precaution, but as of Sunday afternoon no oil had reached the lake, Jeffers said.
He added that dikes had been built to prevent runoff into the lake, but heavy rains were making that difficult and runoff from storm drains into the lake were a concern.
Jeffers said that the company received phone calls from people in the area at the same time its pipeline monitors in Houston noticed a drop in pressure in the line. The pipeline is buried about two feet deep in the Mayflower area, he said. Exxon Mobil said responders were on the scene within half an hour.
By Sunday, the company had deployed 15 vacuum trucks and 33 storage tanks to clean up and temporarily store the oil. Approximately 12,000 barrels of oil and water had been recovered, the company said. Crews were steam cleaning oil from property. Approximately 120 Exxon Mobil workers are responding to the incident in addition to federal, state, and local officials and workers.
Exxon Mobil said that fumes from the oil spill posed a risk in “high pooling areas” where oil could be seen on the ground and where clean-up crews were working with safety equipment.
The company said that the cause of the spill was still under investigation.
The Arkansas spill came just four days after the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed fining Exxon Mobil $1.7 million for a July 2011 spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River. In that incident, Exxon Mobil’s 12-inch Silvertip Pipeline spilled 1,509 barrels of crude oil into the Yellowstone River near Laurel, Mont. during flooding.
The agency is alleging that ExxonMobil failed to properly address known seasonal flooding risks to the safety of its pipeline, including erosion of riverbeds that could leave pipelines exposed to damage from debris flowing downstream. The agency also said Exxon Mobil failed to implement measures that would have mitigated a spill into a waterway.
Exxon Mobil has contended that the unusually large fine — possible thanks to a doubling of civil penalties under the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 signed into law last year by President Obama — contradicted a report that said Exxon took “reasonable precautions.” The new ceiling is $2 million. The company said it had spent about $100 million cleaning up damage from the spill.
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