Petrochemicals - US

Image: Jesse and Shirley Eakin stand by the water well they no longer use at their home in Avella, Pa. Delivered water is stored in the tank behind them.

huffingtonpost.com - June 23rd 2016 - Maryam Jameel

Sixty years after his service in the Army, Jesse Eakin still completes his outfits with a pin that bears a lesson from the Korean War: Never Impossible.

That maxim has been tested by a low-grade but persistent threat far different than the kind Eakin encountered in Korea: well water that’s too dangerous to drink. It gives off a strange odor and bears a yellow tint. It carries sand that clogs faucets in the home Eakin shares with his wife, Shirley, here in southwestern Pennsylvania.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

An idled West Virginia coal facility. Officials fear bankrupt coal companies are not setting aside enough to clean up Appalachia’s polluted rivers and mountains. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

nytimes.com - by Michael Corkery - June 6, 2016

Regulators are wrangling with bankrupt coal companies to set aside enough money to clean up Appalachia’s polluted rivers and mountains so that taxpayers are not stuck with the $1 billion bill.

The regulators worry that coal companies will use the bankruptcy courts to pay off their debts to banks and hedge funds, while leaving behind some of their environmental cleanup obligations.

The industry asserts that its cleanup plans — which include turning defunct mines back into countryside — are comprehensive and well funded. But some officials say those plans could prove unrealistic and falter as demand for coal remains weak.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

An older nearshore wellhead is shown off the coast of California in this undated photo. In state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s, but in federal waters, the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Neither industry nor government checks for leaks at the more than 27,000 oil and gas wells abandoned in the Gulf of Mexico since the late 1940s. Abandoned wells are known sometimes to fail both on land and offshore. It happens so often that a technical term has been coined for the repair job: "re-abandonment."  Photo: California State Lands Commission / The Associated Press

nola.com - Associated Press - July 7, 2010

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

Photo: El Paso Times - (CLICK HERE to view additional photos)

texashillcountry.com - by THC Staff - May 6, 2016

The recent Texas flooding has overwhelmed oil wells and fracking sites, overflowing crude oil and chemicals into rivers statewide.

With the onset of storms finally subsiding, state officials have begun to assess the entirety of the damage caused by the flooding that occurred across the state.

As KIII reported, “state emergency management officials have taken dozens of photographs that show sheens and plumes spreading from tipped tanks and flooded production sites” of the Sabine River flood on the Louisiana-Texas border.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - kiiitv.com - Flooding Flushes Oil, Chemicals into Texas Rivers