Pipe Line break on the Yellowstone river

Date 07-03-2011 05:05

Just read this and it looks like the sh!t is gonna hit the fan on this pipe break.

"An ExxonMobil pipeline that runs under the Yellowstone River near Billings in south-central Montana ruptured and dumped an unknown amount of oil into the waterway, prompting temporary evacuations along the river Saturday morning.

Company spokeswoman Pam Malek, who was at the scene, said the pipe leaked for about a half-hour, though it's not clear how much oil leaked.

The cause of the rupture wasn't known.

Brent Peters, the fire chief for the city of Laurel about 12 miles east of Billings, said the break in the 12-inch diameter pipe occurred late Friday about a mile south of Laurel."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/03/montana-oil-spill-yellowstone-river.html

By dbigkahunna (****)

Date 07-03-2011 14:36

Early reports indicate this may have been caused by the flooding Yellowstone.
Mother nature can be a bi*ch.
But the treehuggers and granola crunchers will flop on the ground and foam at the mouth and the reactive administration will see this as a opportunity to add $$ to their slush fund to provide for the leeches.

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 07-04-2011 02:51

I saw that on the news. They gave an aproxamate ammount, but I don't remember the figure.

Coal, oil, gas & nuke are all bad, so We can just sit in the dark and wait for the sun to come up...

By MBSims

Date 07-04-2011 15:35

Hmmmm...you suppose kerosene lamps and cooking fires contribute to global warming? But are they "sustainable"?

By thermopsummit (*)

Date 07-04-2011 17:51

I doubt they find much to clean up rivers here are pretty much roaring yet, we finally got our summer weather last week and yellowstone shoshoni big horn are full capacity.

By yojimbo (***)

Date 07-05-2011 23:14

Yeah them damn en- VI-RO mentalists.....specially them damn flycastin backpackers always grumblin how heavy their rucksack is. Won't need to pack no cookin oil this year. Just throw them trout on a hot rock and they can deep fry themselves. Nothin as tasty as good ol crude and cracker crumbs. Exxon Valdez my a$$. Just a little boating accident. And on the subject of foreign natural resources somebody tell me: Whats OUR oil doin under THEIR soil? What we have here is a failure to commincate....

Yeah, Mother Nature is a Bear and yeah accidents happen and yeah the best engineer outta Georgia Tech or anywhere else is never going to be able to design anything not susceptable to combinations of unforeseeable conditions but a company making 90 billion or even 90 million per quarter in profits, claiming shortages of production as the explanation for rising fuel prices is not likely to get my vote of confidence in their concern for the betterment of mankind in general let alone some picquayune stretch of Eden as pristine, wild, and unexploited as the day it was created.

The question is far too complex to be reduced to polarized simplifications.

By Sberry

Date 07-10-2011 16:27

Yup, if it wasn't for the libs and activists we could still be in Viet Nam, could still walk across the Detroit river on the garbage, could have the ports in this country owned by the Arabs, wouldn't need any kind of safety regs and companies could still say SOL when a guy was killed. We wouldn't need those silly wind turbines or solar panels either, could make the whole planet one big garbage dump at least till the oil ran out while everyone screamed along the interstate bypass in one ton duallies with a sack of groceries at 80 mph yacking on the cell phone. We need some more blue collar republicans to kick their ass.

By Superflux (****)

Date 07-10-2011 17:36 Edited 07-10-2011 17:44

Yep, I usually go to these very spots you see on the TV and papers along the Yellowstone to pick fresh asparagas this time of year. The boat launches that we use for our rafts are all F/U'd. This is a bad scene. I've worked practically my entire 40 year career in fossil fuels. We all need the energy, but it has to be extracted, processed and used with some measure of responsibility.
The Yellowstone is the longest river in the US without a dam on it. Great effort has been made to keep it a suitable habitat for Sturgeon, Paddlefish (both of which have used this area for millions of years!!!), waterfowl etc. Not to downplay the GOM disaster of last year, BUT this is a small river, not a gigantic ocean. The opportunity for dispersal is far less in such a small, closed system.
Unlike floods, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis. earthquakes, this is a Man made F/U by a company that is "making $5 million dollars an hour profits" (quoted from Face The Nation this morning).
For those of us who hunt, fish, play and work there (I have worked at and for the Cennex, Conoco, and Exxon Refineries all in a 20 mile stretch on that river!) it is a very sensitive issue.
The pipeline by current standards would need to be buried 3Xs deeper than they claim this one was. Granted, the water levels are at record heights.
When ever something like this happens, I just hope that everyone learns from it. And I hope maybe we'll all get some more work rerouting pipelines over or deeper under these waterways.