It’s been? little more than four years now since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, burned and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, leaking oil the amounts of which will never really be determined, devastating the local environment and economy. Some estimate the amount of oil to have spilled from the 5,000-foot deep well to be more than 210 million gallons — one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. While the depth of the well (named Macondo) made capping the spill especially difficult, critics believe shoddy regulations and oversight played a critical role, as well.
The Macondo well took 25 days to cap, gushing oil the entire time. While folks made dinner, bathed, parked the car and lived out the trivialities of their everyday lives, Macondo poured and poured oil forth into the Gulf. Though the Horizon was owned by Transocean Inc., the 11 crew members who died April 20, 2010 worked under oil giant BP’s operation.
Critics, environmentalists, and informed citizens used the occasion to clamber for stronger regulations and oversight with a strong turn toward alternative energies but for the most part the government has refused to listen and BP continues to make record profits while refusing to fund US government-sponsored research into the disaster. Local economies have still yet to recover.
http://youtu.be/ehdyGysxq-Q
But that’s not all, unfortunately. No, far from it.
Since the Deepwater Horizon disaster of April, 2010 — a mere four years ago — hundreds more oil spills, derailments, explosions and local disasters have taken place. Here are six of the largest.
Just three months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a pipeline heading to port in Dalian, China burst on July 16, 2010. The Chinese government estimated less than 500,000 gallons had spilled into the Yellow Sea, but former academic conservationist with the University of Alaska Rick Steiner estimated the spill to be anywhere from 18 to 28 million gallons of spilled oil after touring the area as a consultant for Greenpeace China two weeks later. Steiner compared the size of the spill to at least that of the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 talking with The Associated Press. Part of his estimate was based on a report that a 27.7-million-gallon oil storage tanker had also been destroyed in the disaster.
http://youtu.be/qyHwamIjRc8
Only ten days after the spill into China’s Yellow Sea, the largest (and costliest) inland oil spill in U.S. history occurred in Kalamazoo, MI.
On July 25, 2010, an Enbridge pipeline transporting diluted bitumen (tar sands oil) from Ontario, Canada to a refinery in Indiana burst into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River known as Talmadge Creek. Though Enbridge initially low-balled the spill at 877,000 gallons, the EPA stated in 2012 that clean-up crews recovered 1.1 million gallons of oil and 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment, as well. Keep in mind that figure is only what the company was able to recover. An oily sheen can still be seen on parts of the river to this day.
Enbridge was fined $3.7 million by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the disaster — mere sock change to such a large company for such a devastating affront to the community and environment — while the cost of cleaning the spill is estimated to exceed $1 billion! Who pays if not Enbridge? That’s a heck of a discrepancy in remuneration! Western Michigan University likely couldn’t even erect a single new hall for such a pittance.
Readers will be pleased to know, however, this stand-up company has big plans to build such a pipeline through Western Canada’s boreal forest.
The following spring, barely more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, over 868,000 gallons of crude oil erupted from Plains Midstream Canada’s Rainbow Pipeline on April 29, 2011. The spill occurred in a forest 20 miles outside the Lubicon Cree First Nation’s community of Little Buffalo, Alberta, contaminating three hectares of beaver ponds and swampland. Local residents, as consistent with experiences voiced by those living around oil spills anywhere and everywhere across the globe, reported headaches and nausea from the fumes. Plains Midstream currently faces a $1.5 million fine for what is considered to be the worst oil spill in Alberta for 35 years, deemed in violation of Canada’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act.
http://youtu.be/pNcskft6Njc
Later that year, on Dec. 21, 2011, 1.24 million gallons of oil ruptured into the Niger Delta thanks to Royal Dutch Shell’s Bonga oil field. According to the The Guardian, the watchdog organization Skytruth posted photos suggesting the spill to be approximately 43.5 miles long, covering 356 square miles. The Nigerian activist organization Environmental Rights Action told local newspapers that Shell’s 1.24 million gallon estimate was believed to be low, claiming the “company consistently under reports the amounts” — the excuse heard ’round the world.
Don’t think this is anything too unusual, though. An oil spill equivalent to the Exxon Valdez spill mucks up the Niger Delta at the hands of Shell and other big oil companies each and every year.
Less than two months after the Bonga oil field leek in Nigeria, a pipeline failed near Maturin, Venezuela under the operation of state-owned oil company PDVSA on Feb. 4, 2012, spilling nearly 2-million gallons of crude oil into the Guarapiche River according to one lawmaker (a member of an opposition party to the government), though the Venezuelan government claims to not know how much oil was spilled. Environment Minister Alejandro Hitcher claimed Venezuela had deployed 1,500 workers to clean the spill. Later, according to Reuters, a PDVSA executive told the state-run news agency AVN that “a good percentage” of the disaster had been cleaned.
But how are citizens to know if such statements are made with honesty and integrity in an atmosphere where big oil companies shell out big money to world governments, consistently cut corners, scoot around oversight, under-estimate their roles in disasters and contamination and refuse to fund research into the damages they cause annually? Should Venezuelans believe “a good percentage” has been cleaned up? What, exactly, is a “good percentage”?
Later that summer, following the Guarapiche River spill in Venezuela (just last summer), a 72-car freight train operated by Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway derailed in the town of Lac-M?gantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013. Half of the city’s downtown was eviscerated by a subsequent explosion. Forty-seven people were killed and an estimated 1.5 million gallons of oil leaked into the Chaudi?re River, connected to the St. Lawrence River. Rescue and fire crews toiled for 36 hours to put out the fires and a criminal investigation is in the process by the Quebec police. Cleanup so far has consisted of siphoning oil from the river and the removal of over 25,000 cubic meters of contaminated sediment and debris from the area. Rebuilding costs for Lac-M?gantic, Quebec are estimated at more than $200 million.
The saddest fact of all? The Lac-M?gantic, Quebec oil train derailment was far from the only one last year. In fact, 2013 was the worst on record for oil spills due to trains.
http://youtu.be/93T7fnwU6js
How many other spills have there been over the years, year after year? How much devastation can be inflicted before a threshold is crossed?
How long does one spit into a cup before deciding not to drink from it?
Dylan Hock is a writer, professor, videographer and social activist. He earned an MFA in Writing from Naropa University in 2000 and has been an Occupier since Oct., 2011, both nationally and locally in Michigan. He is published in a number of little magazines and has an essay on the muzzling of Ezra Pound due out July of 2014 by Praeger. He is also a contributing writer for Green Action News and administers Essential Occupy Reading on Facebook.
