Arkansas Hires Notorious Private Contractor To Clean Up Mayflower Tar Sands Spill, Same Firm Also Contracted For KXL

Arkansas’ Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has contracted out the “independent analysis of the cleanup” of the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill to Witt O’Brien’s, a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups, a DeSmogBlog investigation reveals.  At his April 10 press conference about the Mayflower spill response, AG McDaniel confirmed that Exxon had turned over 12,500 pages of documents […]

INFOGRAPHIC: 13 Oil Spills in 30 Days: The Dirty Business of Moving Oil

by Heather Libby. Originally posted at tkctcktck.org Moving oil is a dirty business, and never has that been more clear than this past month. In the past 30 days the global oil industry has had 13 spills on three continents. And it’s not just pipeline leaks – oil has spilled offshore and on, at train […]

ExxonMobil Arkansas Tar Sands Pipeline Gash 22 Feet Long, Attorney General McDaniel Confirms

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel announced today that ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline suffered a 22 foot long gash that led to the rupture that gushed up to 294,000 gallons of tar sands dilbit down the streets of Mayflower on March 29. McDaniel revealed the news of the 22-foot gash at a press conference this afternoon and stated that – […]

Stephen Colbert Highlights DeSmog's Exxon Arkansas Tar Sands Spill No Fly Zone Investigation

The Colbert Report last night featured DeSmogBlog‘s investigative findings on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) delegating authority over its “no-fly zone” above the Mayflower tar sands spill site to ExxonMobil “aviation advisor,” Tom Suhrhoff. Stephen parodied Exxon’s secrecy at the site of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill, honing in on the fact that the “private empire” […]

Koch & Exxon-funded Willie Soon Challenged by Students at Climate Denial Event

Crossposted from PolluterWatch. Rarely do we meet those who have made careers selling us lies. Consider the oddball doctors who took tobacco money to deny a link between cigarette smoking and cancer, or the handful of scientists who take oil and coal money to discredit global warming science, or the people who have done both. […]

Ties That Bind: Ernest Moniz, Keystone XL Contractor, American Petroleum Institute and Fracked Gas Exports

Congress will review the Obama Administration’s nomination of Ernest Moniz for Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) in hearings that start today, April 9. Moniz has come under fire for his outspoken support of nuclear power, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for shale gas and the overarching “all-of-the-above” energy policy advocated by both President Barack Obama and […]

PHOTOS: Mayflower, Arkansas Residents Launch Class Action Lawsuit After Exxon Tar Sands Disaster

Residents of Mayflower, Arkansas, are suing ExxonMobil for damages in a class action lawsuit that is seeking more than $5 million in compensation for property damage. “This Arkansas class action lawsuit involves the worst crude oil and tar sands spill in Arkansas history,” the lawsuit reads. The filed claim indicates more than 19,000 barrels of oil […]

As Their Oil Floods Arkansas Neighborhoods, Exxon Wins National Safety Award

Isn’t this the definition of irony? The National Safety Council (NSC) honored Exxon Mobil with an award for “comprehensive commitment to safety excellence” at the same time that Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline spewed an estimated 84,000 gallons of tar sands crude through the yards of residents in Mayflower, Arkansas.  From The Huffington Post: “It is evident that ExxonMobil is committed to […]

Shell Pipeline Spill Is Fourth Disaster In Bad Week for Keystone XL Promoters

Last Friday, as national attention turned to the massive Exxon Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, another oil spill was occurring near Houston, Texas. Operators of a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary’s West Columbia pipeline, a 15 mile long, 16 inch diameter line, received warnings from the US National Response Center of a potential 700 […]

Average 250 Pipeline Accidents Each Year, Billions Spent on Property Damage

If only this were milk there would be no need to cry. Cleanup efforts are currently underway in four separate oil spills that have occurred in the last ten days. On March 27th, a train carrying Canadian tar sands dilbit jumped the rails in rural Minnesota spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of black gold onto the countryside.  Two […]