Few Oil Pipeline Spills Detected by Much-Touted Technology

InsideClimate News analysis of a decade of federal data shows general public detected far more spills than leak detection technology.

September 19, 2012

For years, TransCanada, the Canadian company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline, has assured the project's opponents that the line will be equipped with sensors that can quickly detect oil spills.
 
In recent newspaper ads in Nebraska, for instance, TransCanada promised that the pipeline will be "monitored through a state-of-the-art oil control center 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 21,000 sensors along the pipeline route relay information via satellite to the control center every five seconds."

Other companies make similar claims about their remote sensing technology, sometimes promising they can detect and isolate large spills within minutes.
 
But an InsideClimate News examination of 10 years of federal data shows that leak detection systems do not provide as much protection as the public has been led to believe.

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How to clean up oil spills

September 12, 2012

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a new technique for magnetically separating oil and water that could be used to clean up oil spills. They believe that, with their technique, the oil could be recovered for use, offsetting much of the cost of cleanup.

The researchers will present their work at the International Conference on Magnetic Fluids in January. Shahriar Khushrushahi, a postdoctoral researcher in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is lead author on the paper, joined by Markus Zahn, the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering, and T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering. The team has also filed two patents on its work.

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Oil spill barge gets final tests before heading to Arctic

September 17, 2012

After months of delay, a barge-mounted oil well blowout containment system built in Bellingham is undergoing sea trials before its final deployment to a Shell Oil Co. exploration project in the Chukchi Sea, north of the Bering Straits.

The Arctic Challenger barge project employed hundreds of workers at the Port of Bellingham's shipping terminal through much of the spring and summer. Its owner and operator, Superior Energy Services of Houston, had expected it to be on the job by now, providing an emergency oil well blowout response system meant to prevent the kind of prolonged oil hemorrhage that resulted when BP's Deepwater Horizon erupted in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico.

But getting final safety approvals from federal officials took longer than expected, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in an email.

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Oil spill cleanup: Smart filter can strain oil out of water

September 11, 2012

A smart filter with a shape-shifting surface can separate oil and water using gravity alone, an advancement that could be useful in cleaning up environmental oil spills, among other applications, say its University of Michigan developers.
 
The system could provide a more efficient way to remove crude oil from waterways without using additional chemical detergents, or even after detergents have been added, said Anish Tuteja, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

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