This is surreal!
Exxon’s Duck-Killing Pipeline Won’t Pay Taxes To Oil Spill Cleanup Fund
Exxon’s Duck-Killing Pipeline Won’t Pay Taxes To Oil Spill Cleanup Fund
By
Ryan Koronowski
2
April, 2013
A
technicality has spared Exxon from having to pay any money into the
fund that will be covering most of the clean up costs of its Arkansas
pipeline spill.
The
cleanup efforts themselves took a sobering turn as crews found
injured and dead ducks covered
in oil.
The
environmental impacts of an oil spill in central Arkansas began to
come into focus Monday as officials said a couple of dead ducks and
10 live oily birds were found after an ExxonMobil Corp. pipeline
ruptured last week.
“I’m
an animal lover, a wildlife lover, as probably most of the people
here are,” Faulkner County Judge Allen Dodson told reporters. ”We
don’t like to see that. No one does.”
Exxon
has confirmed
that the pipeline was carrying “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude oil
from Alberta.” This oil comes from the region of Alberta where the
controversial tar sands are located. Heavy crude is strip mined or
boiled loose from dense underground formations that often contain a
large amount of bitumen. This oil is very thick and needs to be
diluted with lighter fluids in order to flow through pipelines.
Reports have stated that at least 12,000 barrels of oil and water
spilled into the town.
A
1980 law ensures that diluted bitumen is not
classified as oil,
and companies transporting it in pipelines do not have to pay into
the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Other conventional crude
producers pay 8 cents a barrel to ensure the fund has resources to
help clean up some of the 54,000 barrels of pipeline oil that spilled
364 times last year.
As Oil Change International said in a
statement today:
“The
great irony of this tragic spill in Arkansas is that the transport of
tar sands oil through pipelines in the US is exempt from payments
into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Exxon, like all companies
shipping toxic tar sands, doesn’t have to pay into the fund that
will cover most of the clean up costs for the pipeline’s inevitable
spills.”
Whatever
you call it, as Judge Dodson says, “Crude oil is crude oil. None of
it is real good to touch.”
The
smell of the spilled oil (similar to asphalt) has reached residents
five miles out in the country, and will likely keep residents of 22
nearby homes evacuated for several days.
Surreal
video:
The Enbridge tar sands pipeline spill in Michigan happened in 2010 and parents are still concerned about the long-term health effects of having such toxic substances seep into areas where children play.
UPDATE:
UPDAT
As
commenter Zimzone rightly points out, the proposed Keystone XL
pipeline would indeed be carrying the type of heavy, corrosive
diluted bitumen unconventional oil from the same region of Canada. It
is unclear how many people who live along the path of KXL know that
the roughly 575 barrels of oil per minute that could be passing
through their neighborhoods wouldn’t be paying taxes to this
cleanup fund. Exxon may have even less to worry about, as Alaska
looks to lower
its tax bill
even further, while one state representative absolves the company of
guilt for the Exxon Valdez spill.
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