#1️⃣ 6️⃣ #FossilDisasters

Texas summer heat wave spurs 22 giant methane leaks from Permian oil and gas infrastructure.

"Official records capture only a fraction of what’s going on in the oilfield — either because they involve routine activities or aren’t large enough to disclose, or because companies don’t even know they are taking place."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-23/extreme-heat-linked-to-22-methane-plumes-in-texas

#1️⃣ 5️⃣ #FossilDisasters

Marathon Petroleum's Garyville refinery caught fire on August 25, sending a giant plume of black smoke in the local area.

Desmog reports that the naphtha leak began 15 hours before an evacuation was called. Carcinogenic benzene was detected by air monitors during the incident.

https://www.desmog.com/2023/09/07/toxins-from-marathon-refinery-fire-leaked-15-hours-before-evacuation-called/

#1️⃣ 1️⃣ #FossilDisasters

A motor tanker loaded with 800,000 litres of industrial oil sank on Tuesday, spilling its diesel fuel off the coast of the Philippines.

The ship became inundated during rough sea conditions, and all 20 crew members were safe.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/half-submerged-ship-spills-diesel-fuel-into-philippine-waters

#1️⃣ 0️⃣ #FossilDisasters

YET MORE Bloomberg reporting. This time a #methane plume apparently linked to APA Corp. facilities in the New Mexico #permian basin.

Oh and there's this >> Neither the NM authorities nor the company were aware of the plume prior to being contacted by the reporter!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/new-mexico-investigates-methane-cloud-spotted-by-satellite

#9️⃣ #FossilDisasters

More from Bloomberg, this time on a *3-week* #methane leak from a Kuwait Oil "burn pit".

Operator says monitors located 7.5 to 19 km away from the site didn't detect the emissions.

“If you have any major leak and it's not detected, it’s a real mystery for us,” the operator said. “We're not hiding anything.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-12/kuwait-says-it-missed-methane-leak-spotted-by-satellite

#8️⃣ in our #FossilDisasters thread.

Bloomberg reports on a massive, 5mile-long #methane cloud detected from a Tallgrass Energy gas processing plant in Wyoming.

Satellite imagery estimates were "76 to 184 metric tons an hour", a rate that was seemingly inconsistent with the small value reported by the operator.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/big-gas-cloud-seen-over-us-state-where-small-releases-reported?leadSource=uverify%20wall

#7️⃣ (Restarting my #FossilDisasters thread for 2023...)

The Contra Costa County health department said that an oil refinery in Martinez, CA released “spent catalyst” into the air on Thanksgiving night. The emissions “contained elevated levels of aluminum, barium, chromium, nickel, vanadium and zinc.

What's more, the refinery did not report the release through the county’s community warning system until two days later.

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/12/14/county-health-department-finds-martinez-refinery-broke-state-law-by-not-immediately-reporting-release-of-hazardous-materials

#6️⃣ #FossilDisasters was last week's massive pipeline spill of 14,000 barrels of tar sands oil from the Keystone 1 pipeline into a creek in Kansas.

(The spill is highly reminiscent of the 2010 tar sands spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.)

Link below has some aerial footage of the site.

(I think that brings this thread up to current, but sadly I expect I will be adding more going forward...)

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/kansas-oil-spill-biggest-in-keystone-pipeline-history/#x

#5️⃣ #FossilDisasters was this November 30, 2022 spill of "about 3,500 gallons of used lubricant oil" spilled into the water in an industrial canal near Lake Charles, Louisiana.

https://www.americanpress.com/2022/11/30/coast-guard-monitoring-oil-spill-response-near-lake-charles/

In honor of #COP27, #4️⃣ #FossilDisasters was this BBC report about toxic produced water from Egypt's Ras Shukeir oil terminal being dumped into the Red Sea.

16 swimming pools worth everyday, containing "lead, cadmium, copper, nickel and other heavy metals."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63603861

#3️⃣ #FossilDisasters was a 5.3 magnitude quake in the heart of the Permian Basin -- the largest earthquake ever recorded in West Texas. (Fracking activities have been found to induce seismicity.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-17/strong-earthquake-shakes-largest-us-oil-drilling-region?leadSource=uverify%20wall

# 2️⃣ #FossilDisasters was a massive ongoing methane leak in Cambria County, PA.

As of November 17, 2022 it had been leaking for 10 days "blanketing the mountains in Jackson Township with a roar like a jet engine and its valleys with an odor of hydrocarbons."

It was thought to be roughly 1/4 the size of the Aliso Canyon leak.

https://www.post-gazette.com/business/powersource/2022/11/17/methane-leak-storage-field-well-uncontrolled-cambria-county-natural-gas-equitrans-midstream-rager/stories/202211160107

Over on the birdsite, I had started an occasional, highly non-scientific thread of news reports about oil spills 🛢️, explosions 💥 , leaks, accidents and other #FossilDisasters.

(It wasn't very long yet, so I'm reproducing and continuing it here.)

#1️⃣ in the thread was the June 8, 2022 explosion at Freeport LNG, which the federal regulator blamed on "inadequate operating and testing procedures, human error and fatigue."

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/freeport-lng-provides-no-timeline-texas-export-plant-restart-2022-11-15/