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Oil & Gas Pipeline Disasters
"We are the only species able to change the natural world, so we must be stewards of the world."
"To paraphrase the Christian Bible (Matthew 16): For what is a man profited if he shall make beaucoup bucks
while transforming the planet into a cesspool." — G.E. Nordell
— primatologist Jane Goodall
Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration of U.S.D.O.T.
National Pipeline Mapping System of U.S.D.O.T.
Clean Beaches Coalition [est. 1998].
Basel Action Network - against 'Toxic Trade'
"An Evangelical Declaration On The Care of Creation"
EarthJustice: Because the earth needs a good lawyer [est. 1971]
Blacksmith Institute anti-pollution solutions [est. 1999] based in New York City
Environmental Defense Fund [est. 1967] based in New York City & Washington, DC
CELDF: Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund [est. 1995] based in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania
Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News [est. 2007]
Stop Seaway Pipeline (in Texas) website {last update 5/2017}
Selected Books on the Subject of the Earth's Biosphere
Selected Movies on the Subject of the Earth's Biosphere
Tar Sands Action group merged in January 2012 with worldwide 350.org
Sierra Club Canada's Tar Sands Dept.
![Bold Nebraska [est. 2010] is a coalition of citizens and landowners and native tribes working to stop the Keystone XL pipeline](images/BoldNebraska.jpg)
official website •
entry at Wikipedia •
director Jane Kleeb • 'Stand with' Randy Thompson
news stories & photos about train derailments and chemical spills are posted to the
Working Minds / Worry About / Earth's Biosphere Page / Eco-News Section
Industry Propaganda
American Petroleum Institute [est. 1919] based in Washington, DC
Association of Oil Pipe Lines []
Texas Pipeline Association [] based in Austin, Texas
American Pipeline Contractors Association []
Pipeline 101 information site [est 2016?]
Common Ground Alliance - lobbyist for the underground utility industry [est. 2000] based in Alexandria, VA
Keystone Pipelines and Keystone XL
The Keystone Pipeline System runs from Kardisty in Alberta, Canada thru Saskatchewan, North & South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas to the Gulf Coast at Port Arthur and Houston. Phase 1 (2,147 miles / 3,456 km) was completed in 2010; Phase 2 (300 miles / 480 km) was completed in February 2011; Phase 3a (487 miles / 784 km) was completed in January 2014; Phase 3b (47 miles / 76 km) is expected to be ready in late 2015. The extremely controversial Phase 4 proposal for the Keystone XL pipeline (1,179 miles / 1,897 km) runs from Canada and across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
In February 2015, President Obama vetoed the bill to approve the construction of Keystone XL, which Congress was unable to override. On 6 November 2015, President Obama rejected construction of the Keystone XL pipeline project. Later in November 2015, owner TransCanada asked the Obama administration to suspend the application for Keystone XL construction approval; common conjecture is that TransCanada is hoping that a Republican will be elected U.S. President in 2016 and that that person will naturally & quickly approve Keystone XL. Which is indeed what happened: On Thursday 23 March 2017 the completion of the international Keystone XL pipeline was approved by a letter from the U.S. State Department and confirmed next morning by Emperor Trump (who owns stock in the builders!). Just days after a spill of 210,000 gallons from the original Keystone pipeline in South Dakota, officials in Nebraska approved the permit allowing TransCanada to resume construction of the new Keystone XL pipeline, with the requirement that a 63-mile detour be added to the pipeline route to protect sensitive ecological areas; the pipeline’s developer did not seem to celebrate the decision.
In June 2016, Calgary-based pipeline operator TransCanada Corp. filed a N.A.F.T.A. claim seeking to recoup $15 billion due to the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, in a legal claim that highlights how foreign companies can use trade deals to challenge U.S. policy.
On Thursday 8 November 2018, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana temporarily blocked construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, putting a hold on the Trump administration's permit for the project pending further environmental review; the judge ordered the Trump administration to provide more comprehensive information on the pipeline's potential for greenhouse gas emissions and oil spills, and for impact on Native American communities in its path.
On Wednesday 9 June 2021, Keystone XL pipeline developer T.C. Energy announced that it was scrapping the controversial project, which was intended to carry crude oil from Canadian tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast; the Canadian company's decision to bail out came after U.S. President Joe Biden revoked the Keystone XL construction permit on his first day in office, at which time T.C. Energy warned that the decision would "directly lead to the layoff of thousands of union workers". T.C. Energy said that it would coordinate with regulators, stakeholders, and Indigenous groups to safely unwind the project; environmentalists applauded the decision, and called for ending other fossil-fuel projects.
TransCanada official website •
Keystone XL official website
Keystone Pipeline entry at Wikipedia
 | "Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues: Congressional Research Service, May 9, 2012" [2012] by Paul W. Parfomak, Neelesh Nerurkar, Linda Luther & Adam Vann 42-page Kindle Edition from Congressional Research Service [12/2013] for 99¢ 40-page CreateSpace 11x8½ pb [5/2012] for $14.99 |
 | "Keystone XL: Down The Line" for Kindle [2013] by Steven Mufson (energy reporter for the Washington Post), Photographs by Michael Williamson (also of the Washington Post) Over 160 pages with maps and photographs of the entire route from Alberta to Texas Kindle Edition from TED Books [#34 3/2013] for $2.99 |
 | "The Pipeline and The Paradigm: Keystone XL, Tar Sands, and The Battle To Defuse The Carbon Bomb" [2013] by Samuel Avery, Foreword by Bill McKibben
Kindle Edition from Ruka Press [4/2013] for $9.89 Ruka Press 9x6 pb [4/2013] for $14.65 |
 | "Digging In: A Deeper Look At The Keystone XL Pipeline" for Kindle [2013] from Globe and Mail newspaper of Toronto, Canada Veteran Globe & Mail Reporter Nathan VanderKlippe travelled the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline route of more than 3,134 kilometres seeking stories from among the pipeline compa-nies, business professionals, small towns, farms, cities, and schools potentially affected by the construction project. 76-page Kindle Edition from Booktango [6/2013] for $2.99 |
 | "2014 Complete Guide To The TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline: State Department Final Supplemental EIS - Risks To The Environment and Water Resources, Congressional Report" for Kindle [2014]
Kindle Edition from Progressive Management [1/2014] for $9.99 |
http://www.amazon.com/Century-Essential-Keystone-Pipeline-Canada/dp/1422054616/ 10/2011
http://www.amazon.com/Canadian-Greenhouse-Keystone-Engineering-Technology/dp/1622574028/ 10/2012
http://www.amazon.com/Canadian-Greenhouse-Keystone-Engineering-Technology/dp/B00FGVIXMU/
http://www.amazon.com/Keystone-Pipeline-Environmental-Engineering-Technology/dp/1631179004/ 6/2014
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/keystone-xl-timeline20170615
 | "Keystone PipeLies Exposed" short docufilm [indep Feb 2014] "You can make a real difference in the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, right now. You can help crush the KXL PipeLIES and stop the KXL pipeline." • Exec produced by Lisa Graves (Center for Media and Democracy [est. 1993]); produced, written & directed by Dave Saldana; featured experts and activists include: Kate Colarulli (SierraClub), Eleanor Fairchild, Daryl Hannah, Mara Verhayden Hilliard (Partnership for Civil Justice Fund), Elgie Holstein (Environmental Defense Fund), Hilton KelleyJane Kleeb (Bold Nebraska), Bill McKibben (350.org), Mike Papantonio (Ring of Fire), Tom Shepherd (Southeast Environmental Task Force), Tiernan Sittenfield (League of Conservation Voters), Tyson Slocum (Public Citizen), Lorne Stockman (Oil Change Intl.), Anthony Swift (Natural Resources Defense Council), and Kevin Zeese (ItsOurEconomy.org) DVD/Blu-ray not available • not listed at IMDb • official movie site watch entire 2/2014 film [23:07] online at Vimeo |
'Nothing Can Go Wrong' Dept.
July 2010: Diluted bitumen, or 'dilbit', is the dirtiest, stickiest oil used today; it is the same kind of oil that the controversial Keystone XL pipeline could someday carry across the nation’s largest drinking water aquifer. More than 1 million gallons of oil spilled into Talmadge Creek, which flows into the Kalamazoo River, triggering the most expensive cleanup in U.S. history – more than 3/4 of a billion dollars. After two years, portions of the 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River were reopened to recreation, but in March 2013 the E.P.A. ordered pipeline company Enbridge back to dredge Morrow Lake and portions of the river.
Kalamazoo River 2010 oil spill entry at Wikipedia
 | "The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of" for Kindle [2012] by Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song & David Hasemyer, Edited by Susan White, Illustrated by Catherine Mann
164-page Kindle Edition from InsideClimate News [6/2012] for $2.99 InsideClimate News won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for a four-part narrative and six follow-up reports about the Kalamazoo River oil spill; their page-turner report takes an inside look at what happened to two families, a community, unprepared agencies, and inept company Enbridge during an environmental disaster involving a new kind of oil few people know much about. |
September 2010: A 30-inch natural gas pipeline operated by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded just after 6pm in a residential neighborhood of San Bruno, just west of the San Francisco Airport; the event registered as a 1.1 magnitude earthquake and killed eight people and injured over 50. By the end of the next business day, PG&E stock fell eight percent, a loss of $1.57B in capitalization. Investigators discovered that that section of pipeline was built in 1956, before technology such as x-rays of welds were available; that a project to enhance Line 132 against earthquakes was halted before reaching that section; and that PG&E had illegally diverted over $100M from a safety fund to pay for executive compensation and bonuses. In April 2014, PG&E was indicted on 28 counts by a federal grand jury, with potential state & federal fines amounting to $3.8B; in August 2016, a federal jury found PG&E guilty of six of twelve remaining charges; sentencing in January 2017 levied a fine of 10,000 hours of community service and only $3M (and other penalties). In April 2015, the California Public Utilities Commission fined PG&E $1.6B (55% of which will be charged to customers).
Exxon was fined $1.6 million for the July 2011 oil spill near Laurel, Montana.
December 2012 natural gas pipeline explosion across Highway 77 in Sissonville, West Virginia
amateur witness footage of 12 December 2012 [9:48] on YouTube
March 2013: ExxonMobil's Pegasus oil pipeline ruptured in the yard of a suburban home in Mayflower, Arkansas and spilled 210,000 gallons of tar sand crude oil down
the neighborhood streets and into storm drains and ditches that lead to Lake Conway.
November 2013: A natural gas pipeline exploded near Milford, in Ellis County Texas; the entire town of 700 people was evacuated;
the fire was out of control and expected to burn for 36 hours ('bleeding' away the gas inside the pipeline).
October 2014: Like the Keystone XL, Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper Pipeline requires a presidential permit issued by the U.S. State Department. One day before the Sierra Club
sued the U.S. State Department, the Washington Spectator published an investigative account of the allegedly illegal acts driving the litigation. The State Department is going to court
because it is allowing Enbridge Energy to circumvent U.S. environmental law and pump 800,000 barrels of Canadian tar-sands oil into the U.S. by mid-2015 – without
the required presidential permit. Legal documents, interviews with Enbridge, its D.C. law firm, and the State Department describe an elaborate scheme to circumvent the
law and use an old pipeline permit to create a clone of the Keystone XL.
http://www.washingtonspectator.org/2nd-canadian-company-completing-tar-sands-pipeline-u-s/
November 2014: blogpost "Constant Toxic Spills in Alberta, Canada" at Dateline Chamesa weblog
January 2015: The 50,000-gallon Bridger Pipeline oil spill messed up the Yellowstone River enough that the oil people February 2015: Since early 2013, the Georgia-Pacific paper mill at Palatka (near Jacksonville), Florida has been pumping tons of toxic waste every day directly into the St. John's River. With the collusion of then-Governor Jeb Bush and current Governor Rick Scott, a pipeline from the Koch Industries-owned paper plant was illegally approved and pushed forward. The problem was that dumping the waste in tiny Rice Creek violated federal environmental law, so rather than actually dealing with the pollution, Koch-paid lawyers and corrupt state officials decided that dumping into the pristine St. John's River would dilute the effluent and the feds would have no cause for legal action. Once designated an American Heritage River, the St. John's River ecosystem is now a cesspool.
(This same area was victim to the larger 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill, when an offshore Union Oil drilling rig blew out and spewed 80,000 to 100,000 barrels September 2016: Gas Prices Rise As Koch Pipeline Bursts
October 2016: For the second time in two months, a pipeline that supplies gasoline to millions of people was shut down on October 31st, raising the specter of another round of gas shortages and price increases. Plumes of smoke rose from the site of the explosion in Jefferson County, Alabama, near the town of Helena (outside Birmingham). Colonial Pipeline, owned in part by Koch Industries, said in a statement that it shut down its main pipeline in Alabama after the explosion; the two wildfires caused by the explosion were contained at a total of 31 acres.
May 2017: Minor pipeline leak inside a pumping station owned by Enterprise Products Partners on Highway 80 near Midland, Texas which was contained after leaking only 50 barrels (2100 gallons) of light crude; cleanup completed and service restored in 48 hours. No scary/exciting visuals, so ignored by local news crews.
Nov 16 video report by Greg Palast on the Thom Hartmann podcast [4:08] at YouTube
Other actions in support of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs included a partial road block over the weekend near Hazelton, BC (north of the area that is the subject of the court injunction) by members of the Gitxsan First Nation; also members of several Canada tribes in Ontario blockaded CN Rail and Via Rail routes across tribal lands, crippling rail transportation across the country; a protest that blocked Victoria’s downtown Johnson Street bridge on Saturday, and a rally at Vancouver’s City Hall on Sunday. Protesters have been blocking road access to Vancouver's Deltaport since February 6th.
Criminal Corporations
click for very large view of aerial photo at right
spilled oil shows in the low hills at top left; oil worker trucks show at top right and at center bottom; dark area of river is spilled oil.
had to truck potable water into Glendive, Montana for the residents.
January 20 article in the New York Times
click for very large view of ND photo - note fracking tower and church
January 2015 news photo of crews digging up land at the saltwater spill site at Blacktail Creek outside Williston, ND. A state health official called the 70,000 barrel (3 million gallon) brine spill the state's largest since the current oil boom began in 2006. The new spill is almost three times larger than one that fouled a portion of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in July 2014; another million-gallon saltwater spill occurred in 2006 near Alexander, ND and is still being cleaned up nearly a decade later.
January 2015 news photos of a gasline explosion in the Archer Hill Road area of Brooke County, West Virginia. The fire began on the morning of 26 January; by next day, three valves had been turned off, but firefighters were standing by until the fire burned itself out. The pipeline is owned and operated by Enterprise Products Partners, LP of Houston, Texas whose website provides no information on the situation (five days later).
February 2015 full story & documents online at DailyKos
http://www.kochpipeline.com/AboutUs/history.asp
http://www.gp.com/facilitydirectory/index.html
May 2015: The Santa Barbara County Fire Department responded to reports of strong petroleum odors midday on Tuesday May 19th in the area near Goleta Beach, El Capitán State Beach, and Refugio State Beach; emergency units found that the 24-inch Plains All American Pipeline had ruptured and crude oil was spewing down a gully and thru several culverts to the Pacific Ocean. Estimates are that about 2,500 barrels (105,000 gallons) of the spilled oil reached the pristine beach. A crew from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency quickly began clean-up on land, while the U.S. Coast Guard began the job of containing the black goo in the water.
of California crude oil into the ocean before being repaired ten days later.)
October 2015: Southern California Gas Co. employees detected a methane leak at their Aliso Canyon natural gas storage well in Porter Ranch (San Fernando Valley), California
on October 23. Several attempts to plug the leak failed, taking several months and sickening thousands of residents with headaches, nausea & nosebleeds. An estimated 97,100 tonnes
of methane and 7,300 tonnes of ethane were released into the atmosphere before the leak was declared plugged on 18 February 2016.
May 2019: The California Public Utilities Commission released a report on the Aliso Canyon gas leak, the largest known release of methane in U.S. history, finding that the causes were corroded pipe casing, operational safety failures by the SoCal Gas utility company - they 'did not investigate previous well failures and did not adequately assess its aging wells for disaster potential', and inadequate regulations. The disaster led to stricter regulations and improved policies at the state level.
April 2016: A gigantic tower of flames burst out of Spectra Energy Corp.’s 36-inch Texas Eastern pipeline in Salem Township, Pennsylvania at about 8:30 a.m. on March 29th, disrupting natural gas shipments from western Pennsylvania to the Northeast. Crews shut off the gas feeding the flames and repairs will start as soon as possible, but it’s unclear when service will be restored. Spectra Energy declared force majeure at midday, sending natural gas futures surging as much as 5.6 percent on the New York Mercantile Exchange on speculation that the outage will limit supplies to the Northeast. The Texas Eastern Transmission pipeline is one of the country’s longest pipelines, running from the Gulf Coast up through the booming Marcellus and Utica shale regions all the way to New Jersey, where it hooks up with other lines into New York and New England. The Penn-Jersey section had been transporting 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas a day through the Delmont compressor in Westmoreland County, according to an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. One local resident was burned and his home destroyed; scores of acres of woodland were also burned, along with several nearby structures damaged.
A major gas leak in rural Alabama has effectively shut down the Colonial Pipeline, a vital energy artery responsible for delivering an estimated 100 million gallons
of gasoline per day to the southeastern United States. More than fifty million Americans – roughly one-sixth of the nation’s population – are served by the pipeline, which runs
from Houston, Texas to the ports of New York and New Jersey. The 5,500-mile artery, owned in part by Koch Industries, was shut down for more than a week due to the leak,
which dumped an estimated 250,000 gallons of gasoline in rural Shelby County, Alabama.
October 2016: The Seaway Pipeline Company [est. 1974] crude oil spill in Cushing, Oklahoma was in a backyard near Lynnwood Avenue and Texaco Road.
January 2017: Contractors doing road-widening work for the Texas Department of Transportation on Highway 121 in Blue Ridge, Texas (northeast of Dallas) punctured the Seaway S-1 crude oil pipeline, which is jointly owned by Enterprise Products Partners and the Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, Inc. through the joint venture Seaway Crude Pipeline Company [est. 1974]. Estimated size of the January 30 spill is 600,000 gallons, or more than 14,000 barrels. After the incident, supply concerns reportedly helped push oil prices 2% higher in early trading to nearly $54 a barrel.
May 2017: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission curtailed work on the Rover natural-gas pipeline in Ohio after the owner, Energy Transfer Partners, reported 18 leaks and spilled more than 2 million gallons of drilling materials. The biggest spill was in a pristine wetland along the Tuscarawas River about 50 miles south of Akron and covered 6.5 acres; the commission described the problem as "wetland soils and vegetation [coated] with bentonite clay and bore-hole cuttings".
November 2017: About 5,000 barrels of oil, or 210,000 gallons, spilled from the original Keystone pipeline in South Dakota on Thursday November 16, about 3 miles southeast of the town
of Amherst. The accident came days before an expected decision on Monday by the Public Service Commission in Nebraska on whether to grant a permit for a long-delayed
sister pipeline, known as Keystone X. (The permit was approved, but with conditions.)
UPDATE April 2018: A spokesperson for Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., which owns the pipeline, told the Aberdeen American News that some 9,700 barrels
of oil (407,000 gallons) leaked in the November 16 spill – nearly double the original estimate of 5,000 barrels.
December 2017: A pipeline owned by natural gas company Enterprise Products Partners, LP [est. 1968] exploded near Loving in Eddy County, New Mexico. The explosion was initially reported at 1:30 am; residents within a two-mile radius of where U.S. Highway 285 and State Road 31 meet were asked to evacuate voluntarily.
March 2018: Forty-two thousand gallons of diesel fuel spilled from a Marathon Petroleum Corporation pipeline into Big Creek near Posey Creek, Clay County, Indiana before the leak was detected that evening; the pipeline was immediately shut off and workers contained the spill with several booms before it reached the Wabash River. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was on the scene and told reporters that it was 'considered a large spill'.
September 2018: A Houston-based company says that one of its pipelines has spilled 8,200 gallons of jet fuel into a river in northeastern Indiana, near Decatur, a community of about 9,500 people roughly 100 miles northeast of Indianapolis. Buckeye Pipe Line said that it immediately shut the line down when it found the pressure problem Friday night (7 September). Local officials say that they have placed booms in the St. Marys {sic} River and are vacuuming the oil off the surface. The clean-up may take several weeks; repairs will likely take longer since the pipeline is buried and is 50-60 years old and the exact location not immediately determined.
December 2018: The U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia suspended the federal permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for construction of the 600-mile interstate Atlantic Coast Pipeline. F.W.S. had cleared the way in September for pipeline construction in sensitive habitats that are home to four endangered species: a bee, a bat, a mussel, and a crustacean. The pipeline, which would run through eight counties in North Carolina when it is completed in 2020, is being built by an energy consortium led by Charlotte-based Duke Energy and Richmond-based Dominion Energy to bring natural gas to power plants, industries, homes, and businesses in North Carolina all the way from fracking operations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
December 2018: The 12-inch Santa Fe Pacific Pipeline burst near Chamberino, New Mexico on Friday December 14, a spill that resulted in 252,000 gallons of gasoline being released into an idle irrigation ditch; about 168,000 gallons of gas had been recovered as of Wednesday; officials announced that the spill was contained a week later. Officials are still investigating what caused the pipeline failure; the Santa Fe Pacific Pipeline runs from El Paso, Texas to Tucson, Arizona and is operated by Kinder Morgan.
January 2019: At least 21 people were killed and more than 70 injured when a PEMEX fuel pipeline in Tlahuelilpan, about 60 miles north of Mexico City, exploded after being ruptured by fuel thieves; dozens of people had gathered to collect the spilling fuel in plastic containers when the fireball occurred. (Illegal pipeline taps like this one are a chronic problem in Mexico; an average of 42 taps were drilled daily in the first 10 months of 2018.) Two days later, the death toll had risen to 89, dozens of people remained missing, and 58 survivors were being treated in hospitals, including a minor who suffered burns and was transferred to Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas.
February 28th, 2019: A six-inch diameter transfer line northwest of Montezuma Creek, Utah began leaking crude oil and 'produced water' into usually-dry Bucket Wash, which was flowing with snowmelt, and the contamination traveled approximately three miles before spilling into the San Juan River. The pipeline is owned by Elk Petroleum, an Australian company with extensive operations in the Aneth Oil Field in southeast Utah; Elk Petroleum estimates that 28 barrels of oil (maybe 1,100 gallons) leaked before the line could be repaired. Oil company employees and contractors and officials of Utah and the B.L.M. and the nearby Navajo Nation worked together to clean up the spillage.
October 29th, 2019: A leak in the Keystone Pipeline (not the Keystone XL), which is operated by T.C. Energy, released an estimated 383,000 gallons (9,000 barrels) of oil into a North Dakota wetland. The leak - an estimated half-acre of wetland, or about the size of an Olympic swimming pool - is the second leak in two years in the 10-year-old, 2,600 mile long pipeline, which carries oil from Alberta, Canada, all the way down to southern Texas. The leak occurred in a low-gradient drainage area near the small town of Edinburg in northeast North Dakota.
The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality said that there are no residences near the spill site and the wetland is not a source of drinking water; T.C. Energy said in a written statement that no people or animals were harmed.
January 2020: A farming family near Carlsbad, New Mexico were awoken at about 2:30am on the 21st by the sound of a loud pop and gushing water from a bursting 'produced water' pipe across the road from their house; Penny Aucoin and her husband Carl George walked outside: "We were getting rained on and it smelled like gas - it smelled strongly of gas". The water pressure was so high in the pipe that the produced water rained down on the family’s home, livestock, and yard a good 200 yards away. The couple live in Otis, New Mexico, a rural community in Eddy County outside Carlsbad; the property has been in George’s family since he was nine years old.
February 2020: Construction of TransCanada’s 400-mile, $6.6-billion Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline began after a dubious agreement with non-traditional fake tribal officials; indigenous Wet’suwet’en First Peoples hereditary chiefs & tribal members began protesting drilling and the pipeline across their ancestral land without permission of their actual leadership. On February 6th, R.C.M.P. {Royal Canadian Mounted Police} continued to enforce a court injunction and ordered protestors to leave; protestors were arrested at several locations, with tear gas and violence by police; as-of Sunday afternoon February 9th, 21 people had been arrested.
June 2022: The Freeport L.N.G. facility on coastal Quintana Island, Brazoria County, Texas was rocked by an explosion mid-day Wednesday June 8th; there were no injuries and all employees were quickly accounted for. Freeport L.N.G. is one of the largest such facilitiues in the world and handles 20 percent of America's L.N.G. exports. The subsequent plant closure was expected to last three weeks, seriously messing with energy demand and gas prices around the world.
  | Colonial Pipeline Company [est. 1962, completed 12/1964] |
Colonial Pipeline Company's computer systems were hacked by a Russia-based ransomware attack in June 2021; pipeline & refinery operations were shut down for six days,
causing widespread fuel shortages on the East Coast. The company quickly paid the demanded $4.4M bitcoin ransom in order to restore service; the Biden administration's
ransomware task force managed to recover $2.3M and shut down the cybercriminal gang's servers.
Enbridge, Inc. [est. 1949] of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge
Energy Transfer Partners [est. 1995] of Dallas, Texas
parent company of Dakota Access LLC, the company responsible for developing the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline; other subsidiaries include Regency Energy Partners LP; Sunoco, Inc.; Lone Star NGL; Southern Union Company pipelines; Transwestern Pipeline; Panhandle Eastern Pipeline; Trunkline Pipeline; Sea Robin Pipeline; Tiger Pipeline; fifty percent each of Florida Gas Transmission and Fayetteville Express Pipeline; and the Sunoco and Aplus chains of convenience stores {formerly Stripes}.
official company website •
company entry at Wikipedia
Enterprise Products Partners, LP [est. 1968] of Houston, Texas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Products
Kinder Morgan [est. 1997] of Houston, Texas
Kinder Morgan and its divisions are notorious for poor maintenance and frequent pipeline and storage tank failures; formerly publicly-traded entities combined under the one stock listing in 2014 include Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP, Kinder Morgan Management LLC, El Paso Pipeline Partners LP, Kinder Morgan Canada, and American Petroleum Tankers; the company owns or operates approximately 84,000 miles of pipelines in British Columbia & Alberta in Canada, in Old Mexico, and in at least 22 U.S. states.
Kinder Morgan entry at Wikipedia •
K.M.E.P. entry at Wikipedia
Marathon Petroleum Corporation [est. 1887] of Findlay, Ohio
Marathon Petroleum Corp. is based in Findlay, Ohio and is the nation's second-largest refiner; its Marathon brand gasoline is sold through approximately 5,600 independently-owned
retail outlets across 20 states and the District of Columbia; in addition, MPC subsidiary Speedway LLC owns and operates the nation's second-largest convenience store chain,
with approximately 2,740 convenience stores in 21 states.
official company website •
company entry at Wikipedia
Magellan Midstream Partners L.P. [est. 2001] based in Tulsa, Oklahoma
official company website •
official asset map •
company entry at Wikipedia
Oneok {pron. one-oak} [est. 1906] based in Tulsa, Oklahoma
official company website •
company entry at Wikipedia
2023 May 14: Pipeline operator Oneok on Sunday 5-14 agreed to buy Magellan Midstream Partners for about $14 billion in a deal that would create one of biggest U.S. oil & natural gas pipeline operators; the price amounted to a 22-percent premium on smaller rival Magellan's current stock price; Oneok also will take on $5 billion in Magellan debt. Regulators and investors still have to sign off before the deal closes.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company [est. 1905] of San Francisco, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company
Plains All American Pipeline, LP [est. 1981] of Houston, Texas
official company website •
company entry at Wikipedia
Plains All American Pipeline transports and stores crude oil, and owns and operates nearly 18,000 miles of pipe networks in over 20 states and Canada.
The 'midstream energy company' reported $43.46B in revenue in 2014 and $878M in profit.
Since 2006, the U.S. Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has logged more than 175 maintenance and safety violations by Plains All American Pipeline and its subsidiaries, which makes its rate of incidents per mile of pipe more than three times the national average (an analysis by the Los Angeles Times found only four companies with worse records). But those infractions only generated $115,600 in fines against the company, even though the incidents caused more than $23M in damage to the environment and to private property. Plains All American's infractions involved pump failure, equipment malfunction, pipeline corrosion, and operator error; none of the incidents resulted in injuries. According to federal records, since 2006 Plains All American Pipeline and its subsidiaries spilled more than 688,000 gallons of hazardous liquid. Plains All American Pipeline was also cited for failure to install equipment to prevent pipe corrosion, failure to prove completion of recommended repairs, and failure to keep records showing inspections of 'breakout tanks' used to ease pressure surges in pipelines.
In November 2018, Plains All American Pipeline LP placed into service the expanded Sunrise Pipeline oil system from Midland, Texas (in the Permian Basin) to Colorado City and Wichita Falls in Texas to the oil hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, 'offering much-needed relief from transportation constraints in the basin'.
Books & Movies
search for books on keywords 'oil pipeline disasters' at Amazon
 | "Stupid To The Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon To Canada (and Doesn't Seem To Care)" [2007] Canadian bestseller by William Marsden
Kindle Edition from Vintage Canada [5/2010] for $12.99 Vintage Canada 8x5¼ pb [9/2008] for $14.43 Knopf Canada hardcover [10/2007] for $23.95 |
 | "Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and The Future of A Continent" [Douglas McIntyre orig 2008; rev 2010] by Andrew Nikiforuk winner of the 2009 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award Kindle Edition from Greystone Books [8/2010] for $10.49 Greystone Books 8½x5½ pb [7/2010] for $14.48 |
 | "Sun Rise: Suncor, The Oil Sands, and The Future of Energy" [2012] by Dr Richard 'Rick' George, with John Lawrence Reynolds author was president/CEO of Suncor, Canada for twenty years, and has won lots of business awards; he basically opened up the oil sands industry in Canada, which remains environmentally controversial - Suncor was somewhat responsible for the impact on the environment and on First Peoples, but other companies have not been Kindle Edition from HarperCollins [10/2012] for $11.99 HarperCollins 8x5¼ pb [10/2013] for $14.32 HarperCollins 8x5¼ pb [10/2013] out of print/used HarperCollins 9¼x6¼ hardcover [10/2012] for $26.99 |
| | "The Pipeline and The Paradigm: Keystone XL, Tar Sands, and The Battle To Defuse The Carbon Bomb" [2013] by Samuel Avery, Foreword by Bill McKibben Kindle Edition from Ruka Press [4/2013] for $9.89 Ruka Press 9x6 pb [4/2013] for $14.65 |
 | "Keystone & Beyond: Tar Sands and The National Interest In The Era of Climate Change" [2014] by John H. Cushman, Jr.
Kindle Edition from InsideClimate News [5/2014] for $2.99 128-page InsideClimate News 9x6 pb [5/2014] for $5.99 |
 | "A Line In The Tar Sands: Struggles For Environmental Justice" [2014] Edited by Toban Black, Stephen D'Arcy, Tony Weis & Joshua Kahn Russell; Foreword by Naomi Klein & Bill McKibben Kindle Edition from P.M. Press [9/2014] for $9.99 P.M. Press, Canada 9x6 pb [10/2014] for $24.95 |
http://www.amazon.com/Tar-Sands-Showdown-Politics-Illustrated/dp/1552770184/
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