When was pegasus pipeline built

Lisa Song from InsideClimate News is there on the scene and writes of how public officials are nowhere to be seen, and Exxon Mobil is clearly running the show, and limiting access to journalists and the public. Others in the media are reporting similar treatment. Sign of things to come? Just last week, we wrote about how the oil spill from a derailed train in Minnesota was being used by Keystone XL boosters as an argument for the pipeline.

Photo: AJ Zoltan on Facebook. The countries involved produce only a small proportion of global oil and gas supply, but see the world-first diplomatic effort as a starting point. Website by SeriousOtters. International US UK. Facebook-f Twitter. By Ben Jervey. Who is on this story? Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones on what Exxon is trying to hide from the public. Steven Mufson reported on the spill for the Washington Post , where there is also a startling slideshow.

What content do you want to subscribe to? Sign Up. First responders, including fire fighters, city employees, county road crews and police built dikes to block culverts and stop the crude from fouling the lake. ExxonMobil deployed 3, feet 1, m of containment boom around the lake. ExxonMobil said that by early morning on March 30 there was no more oil spilling from the pipeline and trucks were there to assist with the cleanup.

Residents of the homes evacuated were allowed to temporarily return to their homes escorted by police to retrieve personal items. ExxonMobil set up a claims hotline for affected residents. There have been varying estimates of how much crude spilled. Initially ExxonMobil did not state an exact amount.

On March 30, the company reported that 4, barrels , US gal; m3 of oil and water mix had been recovered. The following day the company said 12, barrels , US gal; 1, m3 of oil and water had been recovered.

The company was unable to estimate how much of the total was oil and how much water. On April 10, UPI reported that around 5, barrels , US gal; m3 of oil were spilled but quoted Exxon as saying that the final volume would not be known until after the pipeline was repaired and refilled. On April 1, , the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was closing the airspace from the ground to 1, feet m over the disaster area; the restriction spanned a 5-mile 8.

Surhrhoff was identified as an "aviation advisor" to ExxonMobil. According to the order: "continued operation of the Pegasus Pipeline would be hazardous to life, property, and the environment. In a letter to ExxonMobil McDaniel stated: "There are many questions and concerns remaining as to the long-term impacts, environmental or otherwise, from this spill," He asked ExxonMobil to preserve records pending his investigation.

For several days after the spill, local residents complained about the "horrible smell" of the diluted bitumen. According to Fox 16 News , the air quality readings have been reviewed by the Arkansas Department of Health and are below levels that will cause health effects for the general population except in cleanup areas where emergency responders are working. Since the spill on March 29, there have been conflicting reports as to whether the oil sands oil has reached Lake Conway.

Official reports have indicated that there is no oil in Lake Conway, but an independent study claims to have samples showing oil in the water column. While initial reports of air quality by the Arkansas Department of Health did not reveal levels that were of concern for health effects, monitoring by a citizens group has revealed significant readings of toxic chemicals.

According to a representative of the Sierra Club: "Total toxic hydrocarbons were detected at more than 88, parts per billion in the ambient air. However, the report, released by the Faulkner Citizens Advisory Group, said residents were still showing symptoms of exposure to harmful chemicals, including benzene and toluene , more than four weeks after the spill.

Residents of Mayflower are seeking payment from ExxonMobil for the environmental damage caused by the spill. By initiating action, they've forced the state and federal governments to file a lawsuit against the company. According to Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, the lawsuit came quickly—within three months after the spill—but he said that the governments were forced to act.

Citizens may file suits in lieu of the government, if the government won't act. A threatened lawsuit from displaced residents forced the state and federal government to file suit, or lose the opportunity. Commenting about ExxonMobil, McDaneil added: "I think that they have done a really good job with response and cleanup, but then they break the law when they store the stuff that they removed from the site. Arkansas officials had not granted permission to store hazardous material and have ordered the company to stop immediately.

It did not admit liability. Wikipedia also has an article on Pegasus Crude Oil Pipeline. Log in Request account. Navigation Main page. Recent changes. Random page. Fitzgerald called, and Exxon was out in a jiffy, yanking timber off the pipe and supervising the burning of the brush. The trip from the clubhouse to the Pegasus takes five minutes. Fitzgerald steers a golf cart down a knobby asphalt path, through hairpin turns between trees, and to the creek where the pipe is exposed, parallel to a little bridge.

When the pipe was operating, 4 million gallons of crude would shoot through here at a pressure of or pounds per square inch. The crack that opened in Mayflower was some 22 feet long, roughly the length of this exposed segment.

PHMSA records show that of the spills in the United States between and , the general public reported 22 percent of them. Oil company employees found 62 percent. Sensors caught only 5 percent. Fitzgerald heads back to the clubhouse for a Reuben with blue cheese dressing and to order a Miller Lite from Jones. As he picks his way through the trees he ponders life in Pocahontas.

Understanding wives. Two months after the Mayflower spill, Nathaniel Smith, director of the Arkansas Department of Health, sent a letter to Exxon and PHMSA asking that the pipeline company and federal regulators act on eight measures to guarantee that the Pegasus pipeline does not harm the 18 watersheds from which Arkansans drink. Those recommendations include removing the pipeline from critical drinking water sources and installing isolation valves and protective encasement of the pipeline at all stream crossings.

The letter also called on Exxon to update its emergency response plans and stockpile enough equipment to address spills promptly and thoroughly. One of the water sources in northeast Arkansas is the Spring River, which the Pegasus crosses just before the Spring dumps into the Black River. When the hazardous materials team in Lawrence County considers the possibility of an oil spill, that near-convergence of the Pegasus, the Spring and the Black emerges as a particular bugbear.

Lowell Myers apologizes for his murky river. Myers has guided here full-time for three years, and, for the 18 years before that, part-time while he managed the business side of Downtown Church of Christ in nearby Searcy. In the house of God, Myers spent his weekdays futzing with spreadsheets. He loved that job, but now he gets to guide people from all over the country, 12 months a year, on the river.

Myers is heavyset, with an easy smile and snowy stubble that glints against deeply tanned cheeks. His flat-bottomed boat is 21 feet long and seats three comfortably. A blue heron loiters on a log as Myers aims the boat downriver. The river is low, and the pregnant clouds overhead suggest why. With so much flooding downriver, the U. Myers cranks up his outboard and steers around a slough. Cypress trees hunch along the banks, their knees jagging the shallows.

A turtle slides off a log; dragonflies constellate overhead. These waters produced a world record brown trout once — 40 pounds and 4 ounces, caught by Rip Collins in — and remains a factory for brown and stocked rainbow trout.

The trout, in turn, feed people. The banks of the Little Red are lined with floating docks that range from the ramshackle to the ornate. The fancier roosts have padlocked rod closets, barbecue grills, picnic tables. Two dozen such platforms pass, then stillness. Myers points to a blurry smudge perpendicular below the surface, prominent enough to roil the current. There, two feet down, is the line of rocks that armors the Pegasus as it pierces the Little Red River.

Fish just hang out. Myers figures no one on the river connects this pipeline to the Mayflower spill. Despite the slouching yellow warning signs at the top of the bank, the pipe and the rocks that protect it are, to fishermen, simply another feature to navigate and exploit, akin to a manmade sandbar or boulder. And it could have easily been here instead of there. Why Mayflower instead of right in the middle of the Little Red? She coordinates the Arkansas Department of Emergency Response in White County, and once every two years, her crews and Exxon conduct drills that suppose the unthinkable.

If the pipeline were to break in the Little Red River, three things would happen immediately. Searcy, a town of 23, people 23 miles away, would shut off the intake valve that slurps drinking water from the Little Red. First responders would lace absorbent booms across the river to corral the oil. The Army Corps of Engineers would stanch the river at its source, by closing the hydroelectric dam at the base of Greers Ferry Lake.

The severed river would continue to spill across the pipe for at least half a day. Counties have reciprocal agreements to help one another in times of crisis.

White borders Faulkner County, home to Mayflower. Megan Brown picked up her road map at the Chamber of Commerce. She modified hers with a black marker, on the lower right corner: the cameo appearance the Pegasus makes in this college town of 52, If they flip the switch, could the pressure build in Conway, so near the rupture site? We ran this scenario past Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert in Washington state, and he said the chance of a blowout during a restart is remote.

The PHMSA maps put the lie to the reassuring notion: The pipeline runs through Conway proper, full of places where another break would become its own unique species of calamity. On Amity Road, the Pegasus runs beneath a Halliburton-owned outfit called Multi-Chem, all vats and big trucks and metal staircases.