[dohboi]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/1 ... disasters/

45 Fossil Fuel Disasters The Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know About

2013 brought a stark reminder of the inherent risk that comes with a fossil-fuel dependent world, with numerous pipeline spills, explosions, derailments, landslides, and the death of 20 coal miners in the U.S. alone.

[dohboi]

OK, let's start with pipelines:

March 29: An ExxonMobil pipeline carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands ruptures and spills thousands of barrels of oil in Mayflower, Arkansas. The ruptured pipeline gushed 210,000 gallons of heavy Canadian crude into a residential street and forced the evacuation of 22 homes. Exxon was hit with a paltry $2.6 million fine by federal pipeline safety regulators for the incident in November — just 1/3000th of its third quarter profits.

May 20: Underground tar sands leaks start popping up in Alberta, Canada, and do not stop for at least five months. In September the company responsible was ordered to drain a lake so that contamination on the lake’s bottom can be cleaned up. As of September 11, the leaks had spilled more than 403,900 gallons — or about 9,617 barrels — of oily bitumen into the surrounding boreal forest and muskeg, the acidic, marshy soil found in the forest.

July 30: About 50 tons of oil spills into the sea off Rayong province of Thailand from a leak in the pipeline operated by PTT Global Chemical Plc. It was the fourth major oil spill in the country’s history.

August 13: An ethane and propane pipeline belonging to Tesoro Corp. running beneath an Illinois cornfield ruptures and explodes. Residents heard a massive blast and then saw flames shooting 300 feet into the air, visible for 20 miles.

August 20: A natural gas pipeline explodes in New Mexico, killing five adults and five children who were camping. Authorities said one end of the ruptured line became “a virtual flame-thrower, showering fire” on the victims camped beneath a bridge about 200 yards away.

September 29: A North Dakota farmer winds up discovering the largest onshore oil spill in U.S. history, the size of seven football fields. At least 20,600 barrels of oil leaked from a Tesoro Corp-owned pipeline onto the Jensens’ land, and it went unreported to North Dakotans for more than a week. An AP investigation later discovered that nearly 300 oil spills and 750 “oil field incidents” had gone unreported to the public since January 2012.

October 7: An Oil and Natural Gas Corp. pipeline that carries crude from the offshore Mumbai High fields to India ruptures and spills at an onshore facility, but oil winds up flowing into the Arabian sea because of rainfall.

October 9: A natural gas pipeline explodes in northwest Oklahoma, sparking a large fire and prompting evacuations. No injuries or deaths were reported.

October 30: 17,000 gallons of crude oil spill from an eight-inch pipeline owned by Koch Pipeline Company in Texas. The spill impacted a rural area and two livestock ponds near Smithville and was discovered on a routine aerial inspection.

November 14: A Chevron natural gas pipeline explodes in Milford, Texas, causing the town of 700 people to evacuate. The flames could reportedly be seen for miles.

November 22: An oil pipeline explodes in Qingdao, China, killing 62 and setting ocean on fire. The underground pipeline’s explosion opened a hole in the road that swallowed at least one truck, according to Reuters, and oil seeped into utility pipes under Qingdao.

November 29: A 30-inch gas gas pipeline in a rural area of western Missouri ruptures and explodes, sending a 300 foot high fireball into the air.

[ROCKMAN]

And from the govt statisticians: Top 5 Causes of Accidental Death in the United States

5. Choking (Approximately 2,500 deaths per year)
4. Fires (2,700 annual deaths)
3. Falls (25,000 annual deaths)
2. Poisoning (39,000 annual deaths)
1. Motor Vehicle Incidents (42,000 annual deaths)

Total yearly body count from non-fossil fuel deaths: 111,200. A “stark reminder of the inherent risk” that exists in the rest of the country.

[dohboi]

Squirrel! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSUXXzN26zg

Couldn't resist. Yes, of course, there are lots of dangers in the world. I guess that's a good reason to add ever more?

But really, I was hoping you'd come along to give other kinds of perspectives to this. Are these things you see all the time? Once in a while? Rarely/never in your career? Thanks ahead of time for any insight.

[nocar]

1. Motor Vehicle Incidents (42,000 annual deaths)

In my world, these are fossil fuel accidents too. Although the fossil fuels were used as intended, in contrast to getting into unintended places like oil spills.

[dohboi]

Coal Mines

February 11 An explosion in a coal mine in northern Russia kills at least 17 miners in a shaft saturated with methane gas. Rescue workers said 23 people had been in the shaft at the time. The blast occurred about 2,500 feet underground.

February 13: Very large landslide hits a colliery in Northern England. No injuries, but Dave Petley, a geology professor at Durham University, said it “may well be the largest and most significant landslide in the UK for a decade or more.”

February 13: A 28-year-old mining machine operator was killed when he was pinned between the tail of the remote controlled continuous mining machine and the coal rib in an underground mine in Illinois. Timothy Chamness had only been a mine machine operator for 6 months when the incident occurred.

February 14: A landslide hits the Phillippines’ largest open coal mining pit, burying at least 13 workers and killing at least 7. The accident was the third to occur in mining sites in the country over the last six months.

February 19: A large rock cliff collapses on top of a coal mine in southern China, burying and killing five people, including two children. An estimated 5,000 cubic metres of rock fell on Yudong village in Kaili, in the country’s Guizhou province.

March 13: A 63-year-old man with 40 years of mining experience was killed underground when he was struck by a large piece of roof rock. The rock that fell was approximately 6 feet long by 5.5 feet wide and about 5 inches thick.

March 29 and April 1: The Babao Coal mine explosions kill 53 people in China. The coal mine company responsible, Tonghua Mining (Group) Co. Ltd., was later found to have concealed the death toll in the incidents, additionally concealing deaths of six workers in five accidents in 2012...

[dohboi]

Coal Mines continued:

May 11: Illegal mining causes an explosion in a Chinese coal mine that killed 28 and left 18 injured. China orders production suspension at all coal mines in the southwestern province of Sichuan, China’s 16th-biggest coal producing province, after the blast.

July 16: A landslide at a coal mine in Bulgaria claims the lives of two people who were discovered underneath 50 meters of land mass. It was the fourth major landslide in the Oranovo mine in the past eight years.

August 10: Seven people in India are killed after a landslide in a coal mine in the Sundergarh district of Odisha. The incident occurred while people from nearby villages were collecting coal from the “over-burdened” dump yard located near the mining area.

November 23: While working inside a coal mine in Ohio, a 32-year-old man was killed when he was struck by high pressure hydraulic fluid after a valve broke. Ryan Lashley had worked at The Century Mine, which was the site of another near-fatal accident that month.

November 27: A coal mine in northern China’s Shanxi Province is hit with a landslide that buried several excavators and kills two people.

[John_A]

Interesting that in the Saudi Arabia of coal, it is a broken valve which kills someone. And in all those other not as big as the Saudi Arabia of coal folks, people are getting killed by the dozens.

Makes a hell of a point for the safety of American mines, versus all the rest. The US must be really, really good when it comes to mine safety, and therefore raises the point, folks wouldn't get killed in those other places if they were just as exceptional as the US.

And Rock's figures of 110,000+ killed doing regular stuff in America....looks like coal production is pretty darn safe overall, compared to driving cars in America and whatnot.

[dohboi]

Rock's figures leave me with the image of ROCK pummeling little dohboi's sorry white a$$--when I ask, "Please, ROCK! Don't wail on me so bad, man!" R's gruff reply is,"from the govt statisticians: Top 5 Causes of Accidental Death in the United States

5. Choking (Approximately 2,500 deaths per year)
4. Fires (2,700 annual deaths)
3. Falls (25,000 annual deaths)
2. Poisoning (39,000 annual deaths)
1. Motor Vehicle Incidents (42,000 annual deaths)

Total yearly body count from non-fossil fuel deaths: 111,200. A “stark reminder of the inherent risk” that exists in the rest of the country.

See, lots of other people are suffering in ways that have nothing to do with my beating the sh!t out of you!

So shut t f up, bitch!"

[Sound of pummeling continues, with faint whimpers from dohboi slowly fading.]

[John_A]

Can someone please explain how some guy getting killed in a run of the mill industrial accident (one underground, instead of being run over by a dozer) somehow becomes a DISASTER?

Don't we have to define DISASTER a little higher than "normal daily activity deaths doing all the things that encompass modern life"?

[dohboi]

Tell his wife that.

And now it's time for:

Offshore and Onshore Rigs

January 22: A Devon Energy natural gas rig in Utah catches fire, causing evacuations for half a mile radius of the rig.

July 7: A hydraulic fracturing operation at a gas well drilling pad in West Virginia explodes and injures seven people, four with potentially life-threatening burns. The explosion occurred while workers were pumping water down a well, part of the hydraulic fracturing process for recovering gas trapped in shale rock. The tanks that recover the water and chemical mixture after they return to the surface are what reportedly exploded.

July 27: BP’s Hercules 265 offshore gas rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana explodes, enveloping the rig in a cloud of gas and a thin sheen of gas in the water. After spewing gas for more than a day, the rig finally “bridged over,” meaning small pieces of sediment and sand blocked more gas from escaping.

August 20: A gas rig belonging to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan exploded in the Caspian sea while workers were carrying out exploratory drilling, when it hit a pocket of gas at unexpectedly high pressure.

August 28: A “well-control incident” at an oil drilling rig in rural south Texas causes an “intense” explosion after workers were drilling horizontally into the Eagle Ford Shale, causing homes to be evacuated.

[John_A]

Tell his wife that.

So if you are quantifying disaster as a single person dying in a single accident than Rock has you beat 5X5 with every single death across the planet for every OTHER reason, in which case fossil fuel "disasters" are nothing but blips barely visible against starvation, old age, wars, car wrecks, diabetes, obesity, smoking and falling down and hitting ones head on the curb.

And now it's time for:

Offshore and Onshore Rigs

January 22: A Devon Energy natural gas rig in Utah catches fire, causing evacuations for half a mile radius of the rig.

July 7: A hydraulic fracturing operation at a gas well drilling pad in West Virginia explodes and injures seven people, four with potentially life-threatening burns. The explosion occurred while workers were pumping water down a well, part of the hydraulic fracturing process for recovering gas trapped in shale rock. The tanks that recover the water and chemical mixture after they return to the surface are what reportedly exploded.

July 27: BP’s Hercules 265 offshore gas rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana explodes, enveloping the rig in a cloud of gas and a thin sheen of gas in the water. After spewing gas for more than a day, the rig finally “bridged over,” meaning small pieces of sediment and sand blocked more gas from escaping.

August 20: A gas rig belonging to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan exploded in the Caspian sea while workers were carrying out exploratory drilling, when it hit a pocket of gas at unexpectedly high pressure.

August 28: A “well-control incident” at an oil drilling rig in rural south Texas causes an “intense” explosion after workers were drilling horizontally into the Eagle Ford Shale, causing homes to be evacuated.

So now industrial accidents NOT involving death, OR disaster, are counted?

How wonderfully subjective and thoroughly irrelevant. According to your examples, a well having a gas count in the mud returns is a disaster because the earth, it leaks!

[dohboi]

Thanks for keeping the thread bumped, Johnny. As long as you keep replying, I have an excuse to offer up more death-fuel mayhem.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

National Annual Diesel Fine Particle
Health Impacts
Annual Cases in the U.S., 2010
Premature Deaths 21,000
Lung Cancer Deaths 3,000
Hospital Admissions 15,000
Emergency Room Visits for Asthma 15,000
Non-fatal Heart Attacks 27,000
Asthma Attacks 410,000
Chronic Bronchitis 12,000
Work Loss Days 2,400,000
Restricted Activity Days 14,000,000

In the United States, 23,600 deaths each year can be attributed to air pollution from power plants. Those dying prematurely due to exposure to particulate matter lose, on average, 14 years of life. Burning coal also is responsible for some 554,000 asthma attacks, 16,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks each year. Atmospheric power plant pollution in the United States racks up an estimated annual health care bill of over $160 billion.

Dahboi, If you're going for large death counts you have to talk about business as usual. That's the only way to kill a lot of people.

The kind of accidents you're talking about with fossil fuels are all to common. I was an engineer in a regular factory for 5 years. Somebody set themselves on fire in front of me. We had people falling off ladders etc. I worked as a trucker in a place that dropped a 1 foot steel pipe on a trucker, squashing him. This kind of stuff happens, and I have no idea if oil companies are worse or better than anybody else. A couple weeks ago I was helping a friend, who builds timber frame houses. About half way through the day I noticed, no safety belts, no safety glasses, no hard hats and those timber frames are huge. People were getting hit in the head by 2X4s. It was probably worse than any oil drilling site.

[dohboi]

" If you're going for large death counts you have to talk about business as usual"

Thanks, k, that's exactly the point, here, as far as I'm concerned.

There are local tragedies of various sort in the extraction, transportation, refining, and every other aspect of this industry.

But the real, greater tragedy is when these death-fuels actually make it to 'market' and are burned, contributing to more 4-per-second atom-bomb-strength annihilations unleashed on this, our precious, sacred, fragile, blue pearl.

When you drop an atom bomb into the soup, there is no taking it back. It has done its destruction. We can only stand and mourn--or much more likely, go on dropping more, and more, and more...life obliterating bombs...millions of them every week. billions of them every year...each of us must own at least one in our profligate life times; most many.

have a holly jolly christmass...oh, by golly have a....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pdqdEEeHwg

Ives was identified in the 1950 pamphlet Red Channels and blacklisted as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl_Ives

[kuidaskassikaeb]

That wasn't even depressing. your slipping

[dohboi]

Musta been the X'mass spirit!?

[dohboi]

This topic really is like 'the gift that keeps on giving':

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... erailment/

As Evacuation Ends For Explosive Oil Train Crash, Officials Hint At The Persistent Threat Of Rail Transport

How many towns have to be evacuated (or burnt to cinders) how many times before we start to reconsider the path we've taken?

[dohboi]

And they just keep coming:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... nia-spill/

The 6 Most Terrifying Facts About The Chemical Spill Contaminating West Virginia’s Drinking Water

1. No one knows when water will be safe to drink again...

2. No one knows when the leak started or how much has leaked into the Elk River...

3. The water company has had no contact with Freedom Industries, the company that manufactures the spilled chemical...

4. There is no standard process for testing the toxicity of the spilled chemical in water...

5. It’s unclear just how dangerous the diluted chemical is to drink or breathe...

6. The chemical may have leached into the soil...

Lot's more stories on this. 300,000 some people without drinking (or washing or cooking...) water...f'n sh!t storm. Good glimpse into what the future has in store for most of us if we keep going where we're going.

[dohboi]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... -virginia/

Chemical Leak Into West Virginia River Far Larger Than Previously Estimated

As over 300,000 people in West Virginia face a fourth day without water, state environmental officials are now estimating that as much as 7,500 gallons of a chemical used to process coal — Crude MCHM — may have spilled into the Elk River. That number is a substantial increase from early estimates of 2,000 to 5,000 gallons.

The chemical leak, first reported Thursday, was at a facility owned by Freedom Industries along the Elk River, just 1.5 miles upstream from a major intake used by the largest water utility in the state, West Virginia American Water.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water Company, said that it would likely still be “several days” before tap water in the nine counties affected would be safe for anything besides flushing toilets.