During the Deep Water Horizon spill, Obama put BP in charge of hiding the huge extent of the destruction, they poured in this toxic corexit stuff, and that made the spill much much worse.
This year alone 10% of the manatees in the Gulf have died.
People in the area are having skin lesions and other problems.
Other parts of his body, however, seem to be in perpetual disrepair. Dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, bloody stools and cognitive issues surface intermittently, painful reminders of the toxic assault he and untold others endured following the April 2010 explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Several government agencies and BP together hired a public relations firm together to tell lies about the spill to the public, and that same firm – then call Pier System, now called Witt O’Brians, has been put in charge of lying about the Arkansas tar sands spill.
On Friday, a 20 inch pipeline carrying Canadian heavy crude oil ruptured in Arkansas flooding the town of Mayflower with 84,000 gallons of the world’s dirtiest oil. The pipeline was carrying Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude, a heavy bitumen crude diluted with lighter liquids to allow it to flow through pipelines. the oil is produced in the Athabasca region, where the oil sands are located.
According to Exxon, the Pegasus pipeline carries 90,000 barrels of oil per day from Pakota, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will carry 800,000 barrels per day from Canada the Gulf Coast refining hub. This is the second spill of Canadian oil in the past week. A tanker train derailed in Minnesota spilling 15,000 gallons of oil.
This has prompted critics of Keystone XL, to point out the dangers of the pipeline and urge the president to reject the permit. “This latest pipeline incident is a troubling reminder that oil companies still have not proven that they can safely transport Canadian tar sands oil across the United States without creating risks to our citizens and our environment,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.
I’m no engineer, but from what I understand, when a section of pipe ruptures, the quantity of oil that can spill is as large as the pipe is thick and long until you reach the nearest shutoff valve. It also depends on how fast the pipeline operators notice the spill, shut off the flow and close the leak.
In 2009, Exxon modified the capacity of the Pegasus pipeline, increasing the capacity to transport Canadian tar sands oil by 50 percent, or about 30,000 barrels per day. In a 2012 report, Bloomberg Newsreported the pipeline daily capacity to be 96,000 barrels of oil per day.
“an unusual gathering on a barrier island in Alaska. ” They’d normally be out on the floating ice after foraging, but there is no ice this year near their feeding grounds. Arctic sea ice is at the 3rd lowest point in recorded history.
Biologists with the USGS say the situation can be very dangerous because walruses are easily startled, and can stampede. Some walruses, particularly calves and juveniles, can get crushed to death by larger walruses moving about.
RIKI OTT: […] Exxon promised to make us whole. You know, “You’re lucky you have Exxon.” We hadn’t even gone to court by 1993. We had fish run collapses, bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, you know, domestic violence spikes, substance abuse spikes. The town was just unraveling. And we were waiting for somebody to help us: the State of Alaska, the federal government, the court system, Exxon. Nobody. And–
AMY GOODMAN: There were 33,000 plaintiffs.
RIKI OTT: There are 32,000 claims, 22,000 plaintiffs.
[…]
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve said that is not just an environmental disaster, but a crisis in democracy.
RIKI OTT: It is a democracy crisis. The question we started asking as our lawsuit went on and on and on, and we didn’t get paid, was how did corporations get this big, where they can manipulate the legal system, the political system? What happened here?
[…]
AMY GOODMAN: How many animals died?
Riki Ott, author, community activist, marine toxicologist and former fisherma’am. She is author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Spill.
