Exxon's Arkansas pipeline spill: Not Just Toxic, But Exempt

[decay]

This is terrible.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/04/02-2

The news from Exxon's Arkansas pipeline spill just keeps getting worse. Not only are dead (and what officials are calling "oiled" ) ducks turning up - coated in oil so thick it's "like removing gum from someone's hair" - but Exxon, thanks to a legal technicality, won't be paying into the fund used to clean up their mess. What's running through their pipelines is diluted bitumen from Alberta tar sands heavy crude, which under a 1980 law is mysteriously not classified as oil. That means that companies transporting it do not have to pay into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund that covers the costs of inevitable debacles like the one now inundating Arkansas. So they get a free ride/subsidy for trashing our backyards. And yes. Same goes for Keystone.

[mattkime]

I would suspect that they're still open to lawsuits.

[deckeda]

They may discover something more powerful today than outdated laws that protect them: social networking and public consciousness.

[Ted King]

deckeda wrote:
They may discover something more powerful today than outdated laws that protect them: social networking and public consciousness.

If only the public consciousness didn't suffer from a really severe case of attention deficit disorder.

[OWC Jamie]

they are exempt from paying dues in to a fund that would clean up some, all, or none of this spill

that doesn't mean they are not paying anything at all, directly or indirectly

[Dennis S]

Arkansas' right-wing legislators who were all in favor of piplelines are scurrying trying not to look like fools now.

[RgrF]

air footage