Exxon Mobil has created yet another disaster to our environment

In Torbert, in rural Pointe Coupee Parish in Louisiana Exxon Mobil's pipeline has sustained a leak. Estimates put this oil spill at 80,000 barrels of crude. But if history has taught us anything about big oil and their estimates of an oil spill it is probably more than they are reporting.

As I recently reported on the BP Deepwater Horizon grossly under reporting of their 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As was stated, they grossly underestimated how much oil was spilled during this disaster.

But Exxon's current ongoing disaster involves a pipeline which carries a reported 160,000 barrel per day of crude oil. This is all done through a 22" pipeline which this leak was reported in. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is monitoring the pipeline and Exxon's efforts to repair and reopen said pipeline. And unfortunately they do not give us a name of said pipeline such as the Bakken crude express pipeline which I recently wrote a story on.

And everyone that I know, with the exception of a few people, criticized the Obama administration for its failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, but with disasters like this one in LA who could blame them? Pipelines provide us with our oil, but at what price to the environment after a leak such as Exxon's-- I recently wrote an article on a pipeline leak in my home state of Illinois which closely followed by a story which I recently read on the Huffington Post which talks about this leak in the Chicago area.

But these pipelines are a necessary evil but at what price do the come if they are endangering our environment? A price cannot be place on our environment which was once pristine but now no longer is!