Tar sands oil spill ugliness---

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

This sh7t isn't oil-- it's tar that's been diluted with solvents so it could be pipelined...  it's worse, much-much worse than just crude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iIdWGGlBP8

[youtube=425,350]3iIdWGGlBP8[/youtube]

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

 

[pieces o nine]

How many of these disasters must occur before the people making these decisions stop acting like desperate junkies (or desperate plutocrats) and start thinking and acting rationally?

Also:care to bet how many days before talking heads are back on the teevee demanding more tar sands "drilling" and the elimination of "out-of-control, trade-destroying government regulations"?

How terrible for those losing their homes to this.

[Opsa]

It is very upsetting. Haven't we had a bunch of wake-up calls about oil dependence all ready? It spills, it kills, it pollutes, it is inefficient and it is depleting, anyway.

[Swatopluk]

But it does not spoil the palaces and gardens of the profiteers, so nothing real will be done.

[Opsa]

How about if we stop using it?

[Swatopluk]

It's not for our use, almost all of it is for export.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I had a thought:  all the ruined topsoil and creek-bottom mire should be picked up, placed into long-haul dumptrucks (with tarps-over) and taken to the personal houses of all the CEO's of whoever owns the pipeline.  And dumped into their pools first, then onto their front lawns--preferably close to the front doors & directly underneath all the windows.

If there is any left-over after that?  Dump it onto the lawns of the owners of the company digging up the tar-sands.

After that?  Dump it onto the politicians (and former) who made this possible, by putting special exemptions into the various laws & regulations.

I bet we'd >>still<< have muck leftover... 

[Opsa]

I wonder if even that would stop them! 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I wonder if even that would stop them! 

They have multiple houses, true.  But if we keep hitting them in their pocketbooks, they might pay attention.

[pieces o nine]

I had a thought:  all the ruined topsoil and creek-bottom mire should be picked up, placed into long-haul dumptrucks (with tarps-over) and taken to the personal houses of all the CEO's of whoever owns the pipeline.  And dumped into their pools first, then onto their front lawns--preferably close to the front doors & directly underneath all the windows.

If there is any left-over after that?  . . .

Don't forget their private offices, the passenger sections of their corporate jets, the passenger compartments of their chauffeured cars, the private members' areas of their country clubs, their yachts...

*Any* repercussions against (employees) who decline to clean this up for them will result in the executive being taken into custody and confined to an area with an open pit of the stuff -- until the public areas have been cleaned at corporate expense.

[Aggie]

I wish they'd stop lying to us about pipeline projects.  Pipelines break.  It's a foreseeable outcome, especially over a long-distance line, and sooner or later a spill will occur.  I wish the pipeline companies would just be up front about the odds of it happening, and about the typical spill volumes instead of trying to say it's an impossibility.

From what I've seen, small-diameter flow lines in older oilfields are the worst... some of the clients I've worked for had multiple breaks per year, although they were typically fairly small volumes with cleanups that only required several hundred thousand dollars and a decade or so of ongoing management to remediate.  It's difficult to keep up on kilometers of old rusting lines.  The larger main lines get pigged with million dollar high-tech inspection pods that check for weak spots and breaks. Needless to say, these sorts of inspection (and chemical treatments to keep the lines from corroding) cost big money, so there's temptation for the companies to cut costs by minimizing their inspection and anti-corrosion programs.

A spill like that, considering the amount of affected wetlands and the residential area, will cost millions and millions and never get cleaned up back to pre-spill conditions. It's pretty much an impossibility given the nature of the environment and the contaminant.

This sh7t isn't oil-- it's tar that's been diluted with solvents so it could be pipelined...  it's worse, much-much worse than just crude.

That's.... arguable. The solvents in dilbit, assuming they are condensate based, can be quite nasty in terms of BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes) and sometimes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), but will tend to flash off after a spill.  Around homes, this means that there's a serious risk of breathing the stuff in. The light-end stuff is also much more soluble in water and will find its ways into aquifers more easily (or get carried on the surface of open and moving water), but also will tend to dilute out faster. The heavier end bitumen is less acutely toxic, but very persistent in the environment as it doesn't vapourize and doesn't dissolve.  I've dealt with condensate frequently and heavier end hydrocarbons occasionally, but never had to address a mix of the two. I'd expect that in a spill, you'd have a very smelly, flammable and toxic fluid to start with that after a few weeks would 'dry' into a sticky and impossible to remove mess. The crews hosing the spill down with (apparently) water are accelerating this and making the condensate spill worse by flushing the light ends down the drain and into the local waterways; however, it should lessen the hazard to homeowners.

Bitumen itself is literally asphalt (type 'bitumen' into wikipedia - it redirects to asphalt), so I would not be overly concerned by the staining left on the streets. We are surrounded by bitumen. Then again, the oil that is (used to be? depends on where you live) sprayed on dirt roads to control dust is typically horrible stuff, basically waste oil from industrial processes.

Crude oil still contains the whole range of nasties (more or less) as dilbit, but it's concentrated more around middle-weight hydrocarbons. It's more toxic than bitumen in itself, but less persistent.  There's hope that a crude oil spill in soil will clean itself up in a few hundred years.   Bitumen won't.  Crude oil properties are highly variable depending on the deposits they are from, so it's a bit hard to generalize. 

On the front lines of a cleanup, I'd rather be dealing with heavy-end hydrocarbons in terms of safety and predictability. Sour heavy hydrocarbons are extremely unpleasant to work with (odours); however, sour condensate is worse.  Sour condy smells like putrid meat mixed with paint thinner and makes me want to vomit.  I think I've got benzene sensitivities from working around light ends; exposure to condensate always made my sinuses feel like I was getting a cold.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Thanks for the information, Aggy-- it's hard to know whom to believe out there.  Gratifying to hear from someone who's actually experienced it directly.

The saddest part, is that it'll likely be tied up on courts for years before people get compensation.  The only winners will be the lawyers, and of course, the top execs who will no doubt get generous bonuses.

... don't they always get bonuses, regardless?

[Swatopluk]

The most perverse thing is that the corporation might not have to pay a penny for the cleanup since the stuff in the pipeline was officially labelled not as crude but as diluted tar, WHICH IS EXEMPT from the law dealing with compensation for spill.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Where is Batman when you need him?

_{(are you telling me that he was a shareholder of the pipeline...?)}