dilbit.org

Video of all pipeline spills since 1986

admin — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 18:39:33 +0000

Since 1986, petroleum pipelines have killed 500 people, injured 2,300 and done $6 billion in property damage. This video shows the incidents on a time-lapse map.

Enbridge seeks quick OK of new U.S. pipeline

admin — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:06:46 +0000

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/07/17/business-enbridge-pipel...

July 17: Enbridge Open House

admin — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 15:45:34 +0000

Date: Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Time: 5:00-7:30pm
Place: Archie High School, Archie, MO

While it's not a true public hearing, Canadian oil company Enbridge is hosting a pre-construction open house in Archie, Missouri this week. If you have concerns about the existing and planned petroleum pipelines, this is your chance to show up and express them. If you have questions or want to get involved, please contact us.

Dilbit Sinks

admin — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 15:16:55 +0000

Dilbit (aka diluted bitumen, aka tar sands oil) has some properties that make it different from conventional oil. When it spills onto rivers and lakes, some dilbit sinks to the bottom. This is an important difference because the cleanup methods that oil companies use when oil spills on a body of water are all geared toward the fact that oil floats on top of the water. Booms, skimmers and vacuums are used to clean oil off the water's surface. But dilbit is not oil. After a few hours of floating on the surface, the diluents begin to evaporate and dissolve into the air and water. The thick, sticky bitument left behind is heavier than water and ends up on the river bed where it is much harder to clean up.

That's what happened in Michigan. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline spilled around a million gallons of dilbit onto the Kalamazoo River. Three years later Enbridge is still struggling to get all the dilbit cleaned from the bottom of the river. While this seems to have surprised the company, sinking is a long-known behavior of dilbit. The 2002 material safety data sheet (MSDS) for dilbit suggests that when it's spilled on water, a good cleanup strategy is to just wait and let the stuff sink to the bottom, because "product will submerge after a few days of weathering." This section has been removed from more recent versions of the MSDS, but the fact remains that the industry has known for years that dilbit sinks. A study released in 2013 confirms that dilbit sinks in water.

Spills

admin — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:28:49 +0000

This is not a complete list, but just a few of the larger spills in this part of the world over the last decade.

2013 - Mayflower, Arkansas

Company: Exxon
Pipeline: Pegasus (1940s)
Spilled: 500,000 gallons of dilbit
Mayflower, meet Exxon: When oil spilled in an Arkansas town

2013 - Ripley County, Missouri

Company: Exxon
Pipeline: Pegasus (1940s)
Spilled: 40 gallons of dilbit
Exxon says Missouri oil spills from already-ruptured Pegasus line

2013 - Cushing, Oklahoma

Company: Enbridge
Facility: Cushing Storage Facility
Spilled: 105,000 gallons unspecified crude
Latest Pipeline Spill Is Mostly Contained

2012 - Sundre, Alberta, Canada

Company: Plains Midstream Canada ULC
Spilled: 126,000 gallons of light sour crude oil
Natural resources damaged: Red Deer River and Gleniffer Lake
Alberta residents angry after oil spills into nearby lake

2011 - Alberta, Canada

Company: Plains Midstream Canada ULC
Pipeline: Rainbow pipeline
Spilled: 1,170,000 gallons of crude
2nd largest pipeline spill in Alberta history

2011 - Billings, Montana

Company: ExxonMobil
Pipeline: Silvertip Pipeline
Spilled: 63,000 gallons of crude oil
Natural resource damaged: Yellowstone River
US Department of Transportation Report

2010 - Marshall, Michigan

Company: Enbridge
Pipeline: 6B (1950s)
Spilled: 840,000 gallons
Natural resource damaged: 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River. Over 17,000 gallons of dilbit have been removed from the bottom of the river. The pipeline was restarted two months later, but cleanup is still not complete after three years.
Accident report from the National Transportation Safety Board

2006 - Prudhoe Bay, Alaska

Company: British Petroleum
Spilled: 267,000 gallons of oil
Cause: Internal corrosion
BBC: Alaska Hit by 'Massive' Oil Spill

1988 - Gasconade River, Missouri

Company: Shell
Spilled: 840,000 gallons of oil
Cause: Pressure spike
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

What is Dilbit?

admin — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:13:08 +0000

dilbit = tar sands

"Dilbit" is the oil industry term for diluted bitumen, which is commonly known as tar sands oil. Another synonym for bitumen is asphalt. Bitumen is a tar-like substance that has various chemicals and hydrocarbons added to it so that it will flow through pipelines. The industry refers to the substance as “dilbit”. Here’s some of our main concerns: Dilbit contains benzene, mixed hydrocarbons and n-hexane. All three are toxins that can affect the human brain and central nervous system.

Dilbit’s characteristics make it very different than conventional petroleum, therefore it operates very differently than does conventional oil as it flows through the pipeline. Dilbit has much higher acidity, viscosity, sulfur content, pipeline temperature and pipeline pressure than do conventional oil pipelines. Dilbit also contains higher rates of flow per second of quartz and silicates than do commercial sand blasters. These factors create concerns regarding pipeline spill risks. Dilbit does not float when it spills into water like conventional oil. Dilbit sinks, making surface water containment strategies ineffective.

When dilbit spills onto water, unlike conventional oil, it sinks to the bottom making cleanup much more difficult.

Much of the bitumen flowing across America in pipelines comes from strip mines in the northern Alberta, Canada region called the Athabasca Tar Sands (aka Athabasca Oil Sands).