CONNECT
$800 Million Tar Sands Oil Spill in Michigan Blamed on Corporate Neglect and ‘Weak Federal Regulations’
Climate Progress / News Report
Published: Wednesday 11 July 2012
“The cost of the spill has reached $800 million and is rising, the NTSB said, making the pipeline rupture the most expensive on-shore oil spill in U.S. history.”
The National Transportation Safety Board blamed multiple corrosion cracks and “pervasive organizational failures” at the Calgary-based Enbridge pipeline company for a more-than-20,000-barrel oil spill two years ago near Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. [Washington Post]
The cost of the spill has reached $800 million and is rising, the NTSB said, making the pipeline rupture the most expensive on-shore oil spill in U.S. history. The pipeline’s contents — heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands — have made the spill a closely watched case with implications for other pipelines carrying such crude.
The NTSB also blamed “weak federal regulations” by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the accident, which spilled at least 843,444 gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo in Marshall, Mich. The oil spread into a 40-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo and a nearby wetlands area.
Corn prices soared toward new highs on Monday amid growing fears that the drought scorching the U.S. Midwest will prove to be the harshest in decades. [Wall Street Journal]
Climate change researchers have been able to attribute recent examples of extreme weather to the effects of human activity on the planet’s climate systems for the first time, marking a major step forward in climate research. [Guardian]
The influence of manmade global warming on the climate system continues to grow, with human fingerprints identified in more than two dozen climate “indicators” examined by an international research team — from air temperatures to ocean acidity — for a comprehensive annual “State of the Climate” report released Tuesday. [Climate Central]
The ultra-conservative American Tradition Institute has expanded its legal pursuit of climate scientists, using transparency laws to try to flush out potentially damaging emails. [Guardian]
The renewable fuel standard (RFS) for transportation fuel is becoming another proxy battleground between Republicans and Democrats in the renewable energy debate, as the parties demonstrated Tuesday during a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing. [The Hill]
The world is warming, incomes are rising, and smaller families are living in larger houses in hotter places. One result is a booming market for air conditioning — world sales in 2011 were up 13 percent over 2010, and that growth is expected to accelerate in coming decades. [Guardian]
Get Email Alerts from NationofChange
ABOUT Stephen Lacey
Stephen Lacey is a reporter/blogger for Climate Progress, where he writes on clean energy policy, technologies, and finance. Before joining CP, he was an editor/producer with RenewableEnergyWorld.com. He received his B.A. in journalism from Franklin Pierce University.
Top Stories
By Aviva Shen
7 comments on "$800 Million Tar Sands Oil Spill in Michigan Blamed on Corporate Neglect and ‘Weak Federal Regulations’"
July 11, 2012 10:46pm
Solyndra went bust because her prices were undercut by Chinese imports - a country that subsidizes companies to sell more abroad (USA). WE need tariffs to keep imports competitive with US goods. WE also need laws to penalize imported products of US companies that have shipped jobs overseas. Bring the jobs home, invest in OUR infrastructure and OUR manufacturing at home!
WE need to OUT the repugnants and enforce environmental laws on the books, and strengthen many of them.
July 11, 2012 9:41pm
I was just at the Intersolar show in San Francisco this week. The price of solar is becoming competitive and soon is going to start squeezing energy costs more and more every year. Good sites to see what is happening include:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/
http://www.nrel.gov/
The day that energy prices are falling because of advances in technology are not in the distance, but approaching close enough to start scaring powerful political forces that see a threat to their economic prowess from control of the energy resources. Someday coal, oil and gas will be principally chemical feedstock and not energy resources. Republican lawmakers are upset about Solyndra for the threat to the energy market and the economic thereat to their patrons, more than the loan loses.
Personally, I would be in favor of the Keystone Pipeline, if approval came with pre-agreed onerous penalties for any spills. The penalties have to be high enough to not just be dismissible as a cost of doing business. It has to keep the operators up at night worrying more than the neighbors or conservationists. Also, significant financial guarantees need to be in place, from the start, so that the government has a better alternative than just take over the asset in the event of insolvency.
July 11, 2012 9:14pm
And in related news, "Third oil spill fuels calls for Alberta pipeline review."
"About 230,000 litres of heavy crude oil spilled from a pumping station on an Enbridge Inc. pipeline onto farmland, Alberta’s oil and gas regulator, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), said Tuesday."
http://tinyurl.com/79ls5jl
July 11, 2012 2:18pm
Look, why not just give conservatives everything they want? Put in place a manner in which to track their progress and over all benefit to society, or not, and then force them to take responsibility for their actions.
Sure, it's going to take centuries to overcome their destruction, but at least then we'll know for sure their policies work or don't work, and if they don't work, pass laws prohibiting those policies from ever coming back. We have to look down the road not 50 years from now but 300.
Then we can finally start rebuilding.
July 11, 2012 11:26am
Needless to add, the CEO and henchmen are not in jail for criminal negligence.
July 11, 2012 11:09am
A boom in air conditioner sales implies the need for more grid capacity world wide. Can we hope to get renewables online before we come to rely on air conditioning to cope with the warming problem. There is an ugly downward spiral at work. If we are going to adapt to a warmer planet, we are going to need to find alternatives to air conditioning which don't exacerbate the problem. Or as an alternative to the alternatives, how about we sever our dependency on carbon fuels?
July 11, 2012 10:42am
Republican lawmakers are formalizing their assault on Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees for young clean energy companies with the "No More Solyndras Act."
The tagline is: Legislation Will Ensure Taxpayers Are Never Again Left on the Hook for the Administration's Risky Bets - SustainableBusiness.com
At least investment, such as Solyndra, leave us with a body of research and hope for an alternative to the sludge costing us billions to clean up...destruction to our waterways, oceans, fishing industry and...the wrath of climate.
Warped priorities, these Republicans.