Well, if anyone has been watching the news, you may have heard about the little village of Ceresco, Michigan.

That is where I lived for about 19 years, there is a river that flows next to the village and behind the house I grew up in, is still owned by my parents, which we have been trying to sell.

This river has been conaminated with approximatley 1 million gallons (or more) of oil, which is slowly making its way toward Lake Michigan.

This has made national news, Dayton News, GMA, CNN, even the President.

Picture of the Ceresco Dam:

 

Dang it, what happened?

 

The company's version..http://www.pennenergy.com/index/petr..._partners.html

and the gubmints version...http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100729/...iver_oil_spill

and the OMG WERE ALL GONNA DIE spin...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_661196.html

 

That is pretty bad stuff.

 

The reporting is getting worse everyday on all things if that is possible. Hype is spreading by everyone in the "communications" era. How about all the water pipelines that rupture or break causing flooding etc. Most are owned by the governments, contaminated aquafir and water caused by government agencies. On and on.

Latest today on CNN was that the government warned Enbridge about corrosion in January. Yah right, the government has seeing pipeline dogs or something. Linealogs (intelligent pigs) are run by all operators to meet license requirements and they are continually conducting digs to repair/replace segments of the pipelines.
Off rant.

 

Huffington Post!


Sucks about the spill though. Now they are gonna ban all onshore drilling too. I guess that we are gonna have to start breakin horses again.

 

Hmmmmm, wonder who was responsible for those pipeline welds....

Yes it is a very bad situation, and yes it is terrible, but the reporting is atrocious!!!

We in the oil and gas industry really strive to limit spills and contamination on a daily basis. This most likely was an accident. Very unfortunate, but an accident non the less.

Rest assured the government does not warn about problems. They are very heavy handed. My suspicion is that this is a failure which was unseen by inspections and was a surprise to those involved. The possibility of outside forces acting on the pipeline is also a possibility. There is not a pipeline CO in the US that would take the chance of a spill over the cost of a fix. The numbers just don't work, the regulators then crawl up and find reasons to impose more fines.

It will be interesting to find out what caused the failure. Seems to be allot of these lately.

 

The damaged section of pipe will be going to a lab for analysis. They're announcing now that it's not likely the contamination will reach Lake Michigan.