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ISRAEL: PIPELINE COMPANY ADMITS 5 MILLION TONS OF OIL SPILLED IN SOUTH


December 8, 2014

The Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company admitted Sunday that the amount of oil that spilled from the pipeline last week was 5 million tons, much more than the 1-1.5 millions tons claimed earlier.
 
Israel's Environment Protective Ministry said in response they were skeptic of the Eilat-Ahskelon Pipeline Company's earlier claims.
 
Meanwhile, rains forecast for Tuesday are a growing cause for concern following the oil spill, environmental experts say.
 
"If the rain causes floods, that will take the oil east and south, and deep into the soil. It will spread out and it will be more difficult to deal with,” Elli Groner, the academic director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying.
 
Clean-up crews have already managed to move 8,500 tons of contaminated soil into the Nimra landfill since the leak last Wednesday, described as one of the worst pollution events in the history of Israel.
 

Israel Oil Spill: 600,000-Gallons Lost in Eilat Pipeline Breach

December 5th, 2014

TEL AVIV — 600,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a breached pipeline in southern Israel on Thursday in what officials said was one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history. The spill in the Eilat region was caused by "the systematic failure" of construction workers who were upgrading the pipeline, according to Guy Samet, southern chief of the country's Ministry of Environmental Protection.
 
The spill covered an area five miles in length in the the Beer Ora region of Eilat, Samet told NBC News, adding: "We are talking about 3,000 cubes of raw oil that was spilled, which is the equivalent to three million liters [about 660,000 gallons]." It leaked into rivers and streams and appeared to have flooded part of the Evrona nature reserve, a statement from the Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection said, but it had been prevented from reaching the nearby Jordanian border. "A full clean-up and rehabilitation will take a few years," Samet said. 

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Internal documents reveal industry 'pattern of behavior' on toxic chemicals

December 5, 2014

Sixty-six years ago, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health wrote a report linking leukemia to benzene, a common solvent and an ingredient in gasoline. “It is generally considered,” he wrote, “that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

The report is remarkable not only because of its age and candor, but also because it was prepared for and published by the oil industry’s main lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute.

This document and others like it bedevil oil and chemical industry executives and their lawyers, who to this day maintain that benzene causes only rare types of cancer and only at high doses.

Decades after its release, a lawyer for Shell Oil Company flagged the 1948 report as being potentially damaging in lawsuits and gave out instructions to “avoid unnecessary disclosure of sensitive documents or information” and “disclose sensitive benzene documents only on court order.”

Plaintiff’s lawyers like Herschel Hobson, of Beaumont, Texas, wield such documents in worker exposure cases to demonstrate early industry knowledge of benzene’s carcinogenic properties.

“It shows a pattern of behavior,” Hobson said. “It shows how industry didn’t want to share bad news with their employees. None of this information was made available to the average worker … Most of this stuff kind of gets lost in the weeds.”

No more. Today, the Center for Public Integrity; Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and its Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health; and The Graduate Center at the City University of New York are making public some 20,000 pages of benzene documents — the inaugural collection in Exposed, a searchable online archive of previously secret oil and chemical industry memoranda, emails, letters, PowerPoints and meeting minutes that will grow over time.

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Leaked Playbook Shows How Big Oil Fights Clean Energy


December 5, 2014
 
When it comes to curtailing carbon emissions, California leads the way. Its policies promoting clean energy and zero-emission vehicles are the most comprehensive of any state, and have strong public support.
 
Of course, there's one group that's not very happy about these developments: the oil industry.
 
A leaked Powerpoint deck now circulating among climate activists--a copy of which was sent to Bloomberg Businessweek -- details a plan by the oil lobby to derail California's clean-energy legislation.
 
Created by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) -- a powerful lobbying group for the oil and gas industries -- it comes from a November 11 presentation to the Washington Research Council.
 
The presentation details plans to raise opposition to environmental measures in California, as well as Oregon and Washington states.
 

Can Our National Flagship Be Saved?

We step on board the SS United States—60 years after the superliner first appeared in Popular Science—and find a rusting but still spectacular icon
 
 By Eric Adams  Posted 17 hours ago  
 
 Beyond her technological achievements, the United States, which carried 1,928 passengers and 900 crew on Atlantic crossings between 1952 and 1969, is a marvel of mid-century design. In our 1952 article, we touted her elegance: “There is a lightness and easiness about her lines. The bow springs forward not sharply, but cleanly and in harmony with the bulk behind it. The white superstructure and the great stacks lie easily on the sleek black hull.”
 
The ship’s knife-like prow helped her cut through the water at up to 38 knots, or 44 mph. Her four Westinghouse steam turbines generated 240,000 shaft-horsepower. The SS United States is 990 feet long and 101 feet across, with 12 decks and a 47,000-ton water displacement. By comparison, the RMS Titanic was similarly sized—882 feet long and 92 feet wide, with 9 decks and a 52,000-ton displacement. (SS United States has a lower displacement than Titanic thanks to the former’s lightweight construction. Her contemporaries, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, each displaced about 80,000 tons despite being similarly sized.)
 

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