Exxon Won't Have To Pay For Clean-Up

The picture above shows a tiny portion of the oil spill in Arkansas. It is from a pipeline owned and operated by Exxon -- and that company admits that thousands of barrels of oil were released from the broken pipeline before it was discovered and shut down. Now this city (Mayflower, Arkansas) faces a difficult clean-up (and the realization that the ecology of their area will be negatively affected). And guess who won't be paying for any part of that clean-up -- that's right, the Exxon Mobil corporation.

Years ago a fund was created to pay for oil spills. It is called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (and it is badly needed since at least 54,000 barrels of pipeline oil was dumped into the environment in 364 separate incidents last year).  But according to Oil Change International:

“The great irony of this tragic spill in Arkansas is that the transport of tar sands oil through pipelines in the US is exempt from payments into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Exxon, like all companies shipping toxic tar sands, doesn’t have to pay into the fund that will cover most of the clean up costs for the pipeline’s inevitable spills.”

That's because, in their infinite wisdom, the U.S. Congress let the oil companies talk them into passing a law that exempts those who ship this kind of crude oil (called diluted bitumen) from having to pay the 8 cents a barrel fee the fund requires. That's because they were able to get this particular kind of crude as not being defined as oil. And it is not the kind of crude oil that can be gotten by drilling a well. Instead, it is scooped from the ground as a solid, and chemicals are added to make it a liquid that will flow through the pipeline. That liquid is much like a thin asphalt, and is actually dirtier than the crude coming out of a drilled well.

So Exxon has not paid a single penny into the OSLT Fund for the sludge they are sending through that pipeline (and which has now spilled into the Arkansas landscape). And guess what, the companies that want to ship this same kind of dirty crude through the proposed XL pipeline won't have to pay into that fund either -- and that pipeline will pump nine times as much as the Arkansas pipeline does (which means of course, that it poses nine times the ecological danger to the environment).

This spill should serve as a warning to Americans -- that the XL pipeline should NOT be built. And the law exempting oil companies from having to pay into the OSLT Fund when they ship this noxious crude through our country should be repealed. It simply doesn't make sense.