When You’re Hoping the Third Time Really Is The Charm
Okay, West Colombia, Texas, is spittin’ distance from my house. I have to drive through West Colombia to go to a lot of places I like to go to – Corpus, Victoria, Choke Canyon State Park, Padre Island – a whole lot of places.
Thousands of gallons of oil have spilled from a pipeline in Texas, the third accident of its kind in only a week.
Shell Pipeline, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, shut down their West Columbia, Texas, pipeline last Friday after electronic calculations conducted by the US National Response Center showed that upwards of 700 barrels had been lost, amounting to almost 30,000 gallons of crude oil.
It was in West Colombia, Texas.
This is the third major oil spill in a week.
This oil flowed right into the Gulf of Mexico, which is on its way to becoming the sewage system of America. It’s full of more crap than a Port-A-Pottie Convention in Poop, Iowa.
I’m not expert at this but I reckon that we are spilling more oil than we are using. I’m beginning to think that these foreign oil companies are about as careful as a wild hog drive.
Honey, we all leak a little oil, but the good ones control the flow. There doesn’t seem to be any flow control nowadays.
I was born in West Columbia. I spent many wonderful days visiting with cousins there. It’s such a little place. It’s the site of the first capitol building and where the first congress of the Republic of Texas was held.
1Were those the “good ole days?”
I makes me madder than I can say that it took federal overview before someone noticed that oil was being lost from the pipeline. Or perhaps Shell knew and just went on with business hoping no one would notice? That’s a bunch of oil. El Grande Jefe, is anything being done to mitigate the spill?
2Poop, Iowa….represented by Steve (can’t wait for the XL detour to his district) King
3And the fine was $0.00
4Has Governaught Perry had anything to say about this travesty?
5According to the linked story, the spill was into Vince’s Bayou, which the story somewhat misleadingly has running “from the Houston area into a shipping channel that opens into the Gulf.” To be a bit more accurate, it’s almost entirely inside Beltway 8 and empties into the Houston Ship Channel right by the Washburn Tunnel.
I guess the good news is that West Columbia itself managed to dodge this bullet.
6If you own land with oil under it you know that oil lease money is seductive. It’s so easy to justify letting oil companies come in and mess up your land and water, legally, forever. What’s our strategy going to be? Boycott? Make all the relatives mad who share the lease money with you and get left out of all the family carryings on? Paint a message on our cars and trucks? Quit driving? (I have a friend with a new all-electric car.) Get a PV system for your house? (PV has to be sited right or you have to get rid of trees.) Call legislators? Quit using plastic?
7Oh yea! Let’s rush the Keystone pipeline through quick before the word gets out.
8I hear the Keystone pipeline would have sensors to detect when it’s about to fail. Probably the same kind of sensors that were on a big water main in DC that burst spectacularly last month. Last I heard, they were trying to figure out if the sensors failed or if the burst was caused by something the sensors weren’t designed to detect.
If I believed in gods, I’d say maybe they put oil deep underground for a reason.
9Saw a story on that massive ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Arkansas, the expert interviewed said basically our pipelines were put in the ground in the 1970s and they’re all worn out now after 40 years. So get ready to see a lot more of this stuff, folks.
Wheee.
10There are a little over 2 million miles of pipe buried under ground in our earth. It’s my understanding that the fund used to clean up oil spills does not include assessments against the oil sand people. Taxpayers are on the hook.
11And the company in Arkansas doesn’t have to foot the bill for that one. Something is waaaaay out of whack, here.
12Remember if you own land, and if you don’t own the mineral rights, there is no way you have to let any oil company run thumper trucks on your place.
These old pipelines are going to be wearing out one right after another. Probably we need to google “pipeline leak” every day or so. Unless spills are particularly egregious, they are only treated as a local news story.
13Four, Toronto, Arkansas, Utah, Texas.
No environmental impact
14http://www.themudflats.net/?p=37012
And they are giving themselves awards, too.
15There was a spill into a river last year in Michigan (where I lived for many years) from a pipeline run by the same people who want to do the pipeline from Canada all the way across this country to the Texas refineries. When are we going to get truly smart and do like the Brazilians do and use ethanol from plants?They use sugar cane. This country grows enough corn to match them gallon for gallon but Big Oil ain’t gonna let that happen. And by the way, Texas ain’t the only state with refineries. There are some a lot closer to Canada such as in northeast Ohio. Ever hear of Toledo?
16The problem with the pipeline is the same as the problem with all of the US infrastructure: it’s wearing out and nobody wants to pay for maintenance or replacement. “Nobody” includes the corporations that want to keep their profits up, and the politicians, and the tight-fisted-than-ever taxpayer unohoos to whom the politicians pander. All of this industrial infrastructure that made our frontier comfortable was put in during a time of progressive beliefs and economic might. It sad to see all of that corrode away.
17Maggie, the reason the oil is supposed to go to Texas is that it’s intended for export. The claim that this will be oil for America is a crock of bullhockey.
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/
If you want an “unbiased” source, this UK newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/10/tar-sands-oil-keystone-xl-dirty-secret
18AT FIRST, they weren’t sure it was an actual spill, because Tom Delay had been sighted just upstream. Then they did a chemical analysis and found out it was slimy oil, rather than oily slime.
I loved hearing the Exxon spokeswoman about the other spill saying “Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with the pipeline. It’s in great condition.” She says it like that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, I was shouting at the television “So you can’t keep oil leaking from a pipe that has NOTHING WRONG WITH IT?”
But, I guess that’s what they’re going with.
19Texas Ellen, I was talking about landowners who OWN mineral rights, which oil companies are trying to buy up. And daChipster, if they say stuff enough and look sincere and knowledgeable, somebody or other will keep quoting them and sure enough, more folks believe them. After all, everyone knows that we are just extremist nutcases–aren’t we? Exxon is bound to have smarter folks than us working for them, ditto Koch brothers…..
20“According to a thirty-year-old law in the US, diluted bitumen coming from the Alberta tar sands is not classified as oil, meaning pipeline operators planning to transport the corrosive substance across the US – with proposed pipelines like the Keystone XL – are exempt from paying into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.”
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHGrl0sCcAErgke.jpg
http://www.desmog.ca/2013/04/02/pipelines-carrying-tar-sands-crude-us-don-t-pay-federal-oil-spill-fund
21Rhea, so we don’t get one miserable drop of the stuff to use here? In our own homes? Wow! That figures! Just who are we supposed to be exporting this stuff to? Saudi Arabia?
22It isn’t just West Colombia….or Columbia….. take your pick.
This is from Mother Jones…. on what’s going on in Arkansas.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/04/reporters-say-exxon-impeding-spill-coverage-arkansas
It’s the BP thing all over. Threats of arrest if the media tries to cover the story.
The EPA should be the ones out in front on this, and they aren’t. And…. that’s sad.
23I read that there are 18 people dead in one mobile home park in the Kalamazoo spill that didn’t evacuate in time.
24Maggie, it will go to Brazil and China, for the most part.
25It doesn’t matter where it goes, Maggie. Oil is a fungible commodity.
I’m not sure why you think it must go to your house. What difference does it make? If someone else uses the oil coming through the pipeline, that’s less oil they’ll be using from another pipeline. It’s odd to me that you have some fixation on the precise GPS coordinates of where the hydrocarbon molecule was formed.
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