MARCH 25, 2015
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Environmentalist claim heavy oil leak was tar sands.
Environmental activists delivered a letter to Mayor Rahm
Emanuel Wednesday demanding a public report and investigation into at least
1,600 gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into Lake Michigan last year from BP's
Whiting refinery.
The volunteer groups Tar Sands Free Midwest and Citizens Act
to Protect Our Water argue in their letter that immediately after the spill,
regional Environmental Protection Agency officials and the U.S. Coast Guard ily
denied that the spill included heavy crude oil, which the groups say is
particularly hazardous. They also claim that local government officials have
done nothing to investigate the spill or to penalize BP since last year.
"Heavy petroleum oil" was found on the property
according to a "U.S. Marine Safety Laboratory Oil Sample Analysis
Report" dated April 7, 2014, supplied by Debra Michaud, a spokeswoman for
Tar Sands Free Midwest, who said the materials were obtained through a Freedom
of Information Act request.
Michaud said she is confident "heavy petroleum
oil" refers to tar sands crude oil, a type of heavy crude oil.
"This really was a monster waiting to explode,"
said Michaud. "We've been waiting a year and haven't heard anything."
Shannon Breymaier, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, responded to
the group's claims by saying the mayor asked BP in late March 2014 to provide
the city with a report "on its efforts to control oil discharged from its
Whiting Refinery on March 24 due to malfunctioning equipment."
BP sent Emanuel a letter in early May 2014 that "laid
out the spill response steps it had taken in conjunction with the EPA and Coast
Guard," she said, adding that while the mayor was "pleased to learn
from the federal government that the discharged oil was contained and cleaned
up, he has made it clear to BP that he expects the company to be vigilant in
its work to prevent future spills."
BP President and Chairman John C. Mingé's letter to Emanuel
referenced a formal cleanup team comprised of the Coast Guard, EPA and BP
working together, with a Coast Guard conclusion on March 30, 2014, that
"no visible oil" remained on the beachfront.
The EPA's last press release on the incident was on March
26, 2014, while the agency was still cleaning the area, according to the EPA's
website and confirmed by its spokesman Francisco Arcaute. The release said the
cleanup team "saw minimal oiling of the shoreline and recommended a small
manual removal crew."
The EPA's last public comment on the incident was on April
4, 2014, the final entry of a log on the EPA website updating people on the
daily cleanup activities. The entry said the EPA and Coast Guard "found no
evidence of oil on the beach or in the water. The cleanup is complete,"
but added, "The EPA and the Coast Guard plan to perform a follow up
inspection of the lake and shoreline this summer."
Arcaute did not respond to the question of whether this
inspection occurred or to any of the activists' claims.
Jared Burkett, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, did not
respond to a phone message left with his office Tuesday evening.
Scott Dean, BP's spokesman, confirmed what Mingé's letter
said about oil reaching the lake through a temporary connection between the
process water system and cooling water system, and that the connection was
removed. He added that the company has "sealed off other connection points
within the cooling water system."
"The investigation report did not identify the running
of heavy crude (oil) as materially contributing to the incident," Dean
said, adding that BP "fully cooperated" with the Coast Guard and that
"local authorities confirmed the release had no impact on water supplies
to surrounding communities or known impact to aquatic life or wildlife along
the shoreline."
Dean also said an Aug. 15 joint survey by BP, the Coast
Guard and EPA found that no oil was observed on "the rocks," and that
"no further treatment" or assessment surveys were required.
"Unlike light crude, heavy tar sands oil sinks into the
waterbed and cannot be fully eliminated once submerged, as evidenced by the
Kalamazoo River disaster," Michaud said.
Costing $1.2 billion, the July 2010 Kalamazoo River tar
sands spill was the costliest inland oil spill in U.S. history and required the
river to be dredged after four years of unsuccessful cleanup attempts, she
said.
Michelle BarlondSmith, a Michigan resident, said she and her
husband – along with many other people she personally knew – became very sick
after the Kalamazoo spill, when she used to lived about 200 feet from the
river.
"The air was just a haze," she said, describing
the smell being like a mix of "tar, asphalt, some gasoline, nail polish
remover, and a little bit of bleach. It's a nasty, nasty odor. To this day I
can't walk into a nail salon."
Josh Mogerman at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
which was not involved in Wednesday's letter, said that tar sands oil, and
heavy crude oil in general, can be particularly "stubborn" to remove
and can pose serious health risks.
Michaud and the spokeswoman for Citizens Act to Protect Our
Water, Pat Walter, said they are longtime volunteer environmental activists,
but do not have professional training or experience in environmental science.
Contributing scientific expertise to the activists' efforts
is Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist with a Ph.D. from the University of
Washington School of Fisheries. Ott became an activist against oil spills after
living firsthand through the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Ott clarified that "heavy petroleum oil" does not
necessarily refer to tar sands. But her expertise and what she has read so far
lead her to think that last year's BP Whiting spill likely included tar sands,
she said.
"What we've learned from unconventional oil and gas
disasters is this stuff sinks," she said, referring generally to heavy
crude oil and specifically to tar sands. "And people become sick."
"In the North American oil market, there are three
sources of heavy oil, California, Venezuela and Canada," Mogerman said,
adding that oil from California generally doesn't leave the state, oil from
Venezuela generally doesn't enter the Midwest, and that heavy oil coming into
the Midwest is "almost exclusively from the tar sands of Alberta,
Canada."
"In Canada, they produce two kinds of heavy oil, tar
sands from Alberta and something called conventional crude oil," Mogerman
said. "Of Canada's oil production, 2.3 million barrels a day are tar sands
oil, versus 200,000 barrels a day for conventional heavy. The vast majority is
tar sands and we really are at the center, with most of it coming to the upper
Midwest."
Mogerman said a huge percentage of that tar sands oil is diluted
bitumen, a "slightly refined, but very sludgy oil mixed with liquefied
natural gas and very light petroleums just to get it thin enough to move
through a pipeline."
He pointed to the pipeline burst in Kalamazoo showing how
"some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet, things like benzene"
are released when there is a spill from a tar sands refinery. The toxic
material then sinks to the bottom and becomes difficult to remove, he said.
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com
//------------------------------------//
BP SPILL AT TAR SANDS REFINERY HAS 'CRAPPED UP LAKE
MICHIGAN'
MARCH 26, 2015
Oil
giant BP has caused yet another oil spill in a crucial water way this week,
following an increase in tar sands refining at its Indiana plant on the shores
of Lake Michigan.
BP notified the federal government’s National Response
Center around 5 p.m. Monday that its Whiting Refinery was leaking oil into the
lake, which is the source of drinking water for 7 million people in nearby
Chicago, due to a malfunction in the refinery's cooling water system.
The spill comes less than a year after BP started processing
Canadian tar sands at the refinery. Tar sands oil, many environmental groups
have warned, is the "the dirtiest fuel on Earth" and is "more
corrosive, more toxic, and more difficult to clean up than conventional
crude."
Enumerating a long list of historical problems at the
Whiting Refinery, Henry Henderson at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes
Wednesday, "The week of the Exxon Valdez disaster anniversary and a week
after the Council of Canadians released a report highlighting the threat that
tar sands oil imposes on the Great Lakes, BP did what it always does: crapped
up Lake Michigan."
He continues:
While the scope of yesterday’s spill is clearly a tiny
fraction of the Kalamazoo disaster, it’s still not clear what kind and how much
oil made its way into Lake Michigan from the refinery. A day later, we still
don’t know [...]
It is that lack of transparency that drives
environmentalists and government decisionmakers alike crazy. The public needs
to know what has made its way into their drinking water sources and whether it
is being adequately cleaned. Sure, state and federal regulators need to do
better: press calls to state and federal EPA were routed directly to BP to
answer.
"The malfunction occurred at the refinery’s largest
crude distillation unit, the centerpiece of a nearly $4 billion overhaul that
allowed BP to process more heavy Canadian oil from the tar sands region of
Alberta," reports the Chicago Tribune. "The unit ... performs one of
the first steps in the refining of crude oil into gasoline and other
fuels."
It was still uncertain Wednesday as to exactly how much of
the oil spilled. BP said it had managed to stop the discharge by Tuesday and cleanup
efforts continued throughout the day on Wednesday.
The EPA stated:
Under EPA oversight, BP has deployed more than 2,000 feet of
boom to contain the oil. In addition, the company has used vacuum trucks to
remove about 5,200 gallons of an oil/water mixture from the spill location. BP
crews also are combing a nearby company-owned beach for oil globs and
conducting air monitoring to ensure the safety of the public. The U.S. Coast
Guard has flown over the area and has not observed any visible sheen beyond the
boomed area.
Sens. Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin of Illinois said in a joint
statement that they are "extremely concerned" about future spills. BP
recently said they are doubling its processing of heavy crude oil at the
refinery.
"We plan to hold BP accountable for this spill and will
ask for a thorough report about the cause of this spill, the impact of the
Whiting Refinery’s production increase on Lake Michigan, and what steps are
being taken to prevent any future spill,” they stated.
A recent report by the Council of Canadians, warns that the
Great Lakes are at risk of becoming a "liquid pipeline" for the
dirtiest forms of oil and gas available, citing ongoing plans to transport
"extreme energy" sources such as tar sands under and across the Great
Lakes.
“We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg and only just
beginning to understand the grave impacts these extreme energy projects are
going to have on the Great Lakes,” said national chairperson of the Council
Maude Barlow. “We often see these projects approved piecemeal but we have to
step back and think about how all these projects are going to affect the
Lakes.”
This week's spill comes four years after BP's Deepwater
Horizon oil disaster, the largest in U.S. history, which continues to plague
the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite BP's history, the EPA recently removed a ban on BP
drilling contracts and new leases in the U.S., an offer BP was quick to
capitalize on
Source: http://www.commondreams.org