Exxon Charged With Illegally Dumping Waste In Pennsylvania

Exxon has been charged with illegally dumping over 50,000 gallons of wastewater at a shale-gas drilling site in Pennsylvania. From the article: 'Exxon unit XTO Energy Inc. discharged the water from waste tanks at the Marquandt well site in Lycoming County in 2010, according to a statement on the website of Pennsylvania’s attorney general. The pollution was found during an unannounced visit by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The inspectors discovered a plug removed from a tank, allowing the wastewater to run onto the ground, polluting a nearby stream. XTO was ordered to remove 3,000 tons of soil to clean up the area. Wastewater discharged from natural-gas wells can contain chlorides, barium, strontium and aluminum, the attorney general’s statement showed. “Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless,” the XTO unit said yesterday in a statement posted on its website. “There was no intentional, reckless or negligent misconduct by XTO.”'

Comments

Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[eksith]

I'm getting sick of these companies getting away with fines or other slaps on the wrist. I want to see at least some of these thugs in the upper tiers behind bars!

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[ackthpt]

I'm getting sick of these companies getting away with fines or other slaps on the wrist. I want to see at least some of these thugs in the upper tiers behind bars!

Mayhap a trail of emails or (shudder) NSA monitored phones can catch them.

Wastewater discharged from natural-gas wells can contain chlorides, barium, strontium and aluminum,

Sounds like the average energy drink...

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I want to see at least some of these thugs in the upper tiers behind bars!

I'd be happy to see them eat their own dog food. Put a GPS ankle-bracelet on them and make them live on the polluted land and drink the polluted water.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[jythie]

Nah, profits define morality, so by the NSA's standards they are doing nothing wrong. Now if they were polluting for free they might get in trouble.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[nicobigsby]

The problem is the goddamn double standard. Spray a few ounces of spray paint on a wall, and you get criminal charges pressed against you. Hell there was a guy arrested for writing in chalk outside Bank of America, on the sidewalks... wash away chalk. But dump 50k gallons of polluted water into the wild and it's all NBD.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[MightyYar]

But they didn't deliberately deface anything - they left a plug out of a tank, which leaked contaminated water at a rate which may not have seemed significant. They seem to have made good on the cleanup. Intent matters - that's why we have murder and manslaughter.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[ireallyhateslashdot]

And also why we have such a thing as "negligence". They apparently were negligent; either in their maintenance protocols, equipment checks, or, well, making sure that contaminated waste is securely and safely managed. I would say that that warrants a criminal charge, but that's just my opinion.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[Ol Olsoc]

50,000 gallons isn't that much water. It was a 10,000 gallon-per-day spill. That's garden-hose territory. The fact that they were made to clean it up and pay fines seems reasonable to me - I'm not sure jail time is warranted here.

Wouldn't that sort of depend on what was in the water? That's 6 gallons per minute. It is a bit of a witches brew they are spewing in my backyard. Gasoline? Sulfuric acid? You'd support that being dumped in your backyard?

The real blast from TFA is:

“Charging XTO under these circumstances could discourage good environmental practices,”

We've only been told for years that we must punish all offenders heavily.

It only follows that if we remove all environmental restrictions, no fines, no punishment, it will encourage the energy companies to be unrelenting in their pursuit of no spills ever.

Personally, I think if the Energy company Executive board, and the politicians that they own, and their families were forced to drink the water they are dumping, and not stop drinking it until they dispose of 50 thousand gallons of it, we will see the problem disappear in no time, never to be repeated.

Because it doesn't affect them right now. They don't live there. The people and animals who live in these regions don't mean anything to them.

But perhaps they should be concerned. Underlying the Marcellus shale is a deeper gas bearing shale - the Utica. The Utica extends into areas that are populated, some with fairly wealthy people who might take umbrage at pads set up in their neighborhood.

It will happen. I'm not anti-gas extraction. But I can hardly wait until it becomes a problem for people who dismiss it as inconsequential at this moment. People do tend to care a little more when it is their ox getting gored.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[Ol Olsoc]

They seem to have made good on the cleanup. Intent matters - that's why we have murder and manslaughter.

Then again, people do go to jail for manslaughter as well as murder.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[I'm New Around Here]

I wonder who came up with that specific 'fact', that oil is a contaminant right at 'one part per million'. It certainly makes the "one gallon of oil can make one million gallons of water undrinkable" line sound horrible, but what is the basis in fact?

Is 0.8 ppm safe, but 1.0 deadly? What about 0.6 ppm? Is water contaminated when one gallon of oil spills into a 2-million gallon tank? For that matter, oil floats on top of water, so how does the lower 99% get contaminated? If somehow a gallon of oil was mixed into water in such a way that every molecule of oil was separate, and each molecule floated 7 inches from any other one, how many gallons would be contaminated by that oil?

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[TapeCutter]

There's a big difference between negligence and criminal negligence. Years ago my foreman was in a hurry and turned the bubbler too high on a rubber latex storage tank, when the factory owner drove in two hours later the rear car park was covered in several tons of liquid rubber latex. The foreman was certainly negligent since he took a shortcut (I saw him do it) but rather than owning up to his mistake the coward lied and convinced the owner it was my fault with the result that I got the sack before I knew why! Having said that, nothing he did means he was criminally negligent, like many blue collar workers he was simply overworked and underpaid, he lied because he had a family to look our for, I was a disinterested 18yro kid who was almost pleased to be sacked..

The heavy hand of criminal law should be reserved for cases where it is beyond reasonable doubt it was deliberate, or when the company refuses to rectify the problem. Finding someone to blame and throwing them into jail is not working for the US, to the extent that even as a die hard "greenie" from the 70's I would not want to see a "war on pollution". The good news here is that the EPA are getting the problem fixed in a timely manner at the companies expense, which after all is the crux of the matter.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[TapeCutter]

It means that 1.0 or below is considered safe to consume, it says nothing about what level makes you sick/dead just that anything above 1.0 is not considered safe.

For that matter, oil floats on top of water, so how does the lower 99% get contaminated?

Why do so many geeks have so much trouble comprehending simple guidelines? The water at the bottom is below 1.0ppm and therefore safe to consume, matter of fact many Aussies put some oil in their water tank to prevent mosquito wrigglers (the little fuckers can't come up to breath when there's a layer of oil on top). Note that not all oils float nice and neatly on the top of the water, heavy crude oil has a tendency to form tarballs and sink to the bottom, given a large enough body of still water, light oil will spread out to an unbroken film exactly one molecule thick.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[Inda]

I'm also suprised some people cannot record numbers and plot graphs. It's all too easy to get right, I wonder why people question it.

Take a thousand people, some drink 0.6ppm of contaminated water, some drink 1.0ppm, some drink pure water. Record the number of illnesses, plot the graphs with pretty colours. If the 1.0ppm drinkers are above the pure water plots, and they are getting ill, 1.0ppm is too much.

Of course, that's simplified to the max, but the method is understandable.

And, getting water to mix with oil is child-science. I use soap, or any other detergent. The result is called an emulsion.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[MightyYar]

They ARE being charged with criminal offenses:
"XTO Energy Inc. is charged with five counts of unlawful conduct under the Clean Streams Law and three counts of unlawful conduct under the Solid Waste Management Act."

It just doesn't involve jail.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[h4rr4r]

You mean nightmares like laughing while you pay the fine and plead no contest?

I would love to see some of the implications. So far BP seems totally fine.

Re:Can we have someone go to jail now, please?

[MightyYar]

Perfectly fine? Take a look at the 5-year stock price chart for Exxon vs BP. That's on top of the cash payments (to the owners, the dividend hit). Total return since just before the spill is very poor. Someone who purchased $10k worth of stock in BP is down over $5800 compared to someone who bought Exxon, and down almost $2900 in absolute terms.

They dumped the waste water yet no misconduct

[Crimey McBiggles]

Explain that one to me again?

Re:They dumped the waste water yet no misconduct

[cirby]

It's according to how much actual toxic waste was in the water.

While the article (and the excerpt above) mention a list of scary chemicals that "can" be found in wastewater from natural gas drilling, it's also quite possible that the major component was... mud. And a small percentage of oil (usually three percent or less, and even lower for a natural gas well, all the way down to "practically zero") - and other not-very-toxic stuff. Or "toxic chemicals" found in parts per million or lower. If they were using fracking chemicals, the mud might have had some bleach and surfactants in it.

Now, if the rock they were drilling through had a high metal content, the water may have picked up some of that - but probably not too much, overall. Enough to break water standards, but not enough to be actually dangerous.

Since there's no charges, it was probably low-concentration stuff - a technical violation, but not serious.

Re:They dumped the waste water yet no misconduct

[fl!ptop]

Explain that one to me again?

Because shit happens. I've worked at several big chemical plants and all of them have had spills. (To me, this sounds like a "spill" and not "dumping waste.") It's just the nature of the beast, nothing works perfectly all the time. At one plant in particular, vandals/kids/idiots with too much time on their hands got onto the property (not hard to do when the facility covers thousands of acres) and removed a cover off a pipe, causing thousands of gallons of water with a ph of about 1 to flow into a nearby stream, which eventually made its way into the bay and caused a large fish kill. Yes, the company was fined. Yes, corrective action was taken to avoid it from happening again.

From what I read, Exxon cleaned up the contaminated area as best they could. I seriously doubt the spill was done on purpose. I live in the middle of frack-land and these oil companies are spending millions buying/leasing mineral rights, hauling equipment in and out, drilling, fracking, trucking out wastewater and hauling equipment away. Millions of dollars are spent at each drill site. They're not going to risk "dumping" wastewater to save a few bucks on having it hauled away.

Yes, it happens

[YrWrstNtmr]

And it will continue to happen, no matter the technology.
Nuke, frak, solar panel production, high capacity battery production....some idiot middle manager will try to reduce costs at his level, and this is what we get.

Re:Yes, it happens

[eksith]

Then it's time to ruin the lives of those idiot managers. Say to the tune of 5-10 years of wearing an orange jumpsuit in lieu of an Armani jacket?

No

[rsilvergun]

they're your ruling class, silly. We don't spill the blood of kings.

Re:No

[asm2750]

Obviously you haven't heard of the French Revolution.

Re:No

[the eric conspiracy]

Unfortunately the French Revolution was very indiscriminate.

see: Antoine Lavoisier

Re:No

[Mashiki]

Yeah those "college students, weed smoking liberal hippies, and unwashed OWS layabouts" have done a really good job. Remind me again which political groups that they've worked for that have been acted for/to american society? And of course those "NRA gun-toting loudmouths" were also the backbenchers behind the tea party which ... gee...actually made a serious impact on the political landscape.

Re:No

[Microlith]

a serious impact on the political landscape.

Yes, but not a good one. Eric Cantor and Mitch McConell have yet to do anything useful or intelligent.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think OWS had a serious impact on the political landscape?

Either you haven't been paying attention or you have a blind spot.

Re:No

[jamstar7]

a serious impact on the political landscape.

Yes, but not a good one. Eric Cantor and Mitch McConell have yet to do anything useful or intelligent.

They're not supposed to. They're meat puppets. They got the corporate hand shoved so far up their asses, they're chewing the Koch brothers' fingernails.

Re:No

[jamstar7]

Back in the day, they used to teach gun safety and marksmanship in schools. It was part of PE. Nobody shot up school campuses back in those days.

Course, back then, they actually funded things like mental hospitals to treat mental patients, not elect them to Congress...

Re:No

[ixuzus]

Of course not. Back then kids learned about guns and respected them... or rather acted like stupid juveniles with access to firearms

Re:No

[h4rr4r]

If you have been unemployed that long, paid into the social safety net when you were employed and now refuse to take advantage you are a dumbass.

How come

[rsilvergun]

when it's a mistake it's 'some middle manager' but whenever something goes right it's 'the CEO's leadership'. Man, I wish I could fsck up and my job all day and blame all the guys that don't get to make any real decisions...

Re:Now what?

[jamesh]

My friend had a 50,000 gallon above-ground pool in his backyard. If it's even a problem due to exotic chemicals, make them clean it up. It's not that much.

Why the hell is this a topic aside from obvious desire by some for disasterbation? It would barely be a local news story in some small town.

So the company has the decision to make...

(a) $x to dispose of the waste properly

(b) $0 to simply turn on a tap and let the waste drain away, and (say) $10x to clean it up in the unlikely event that they get caught, which probably comes out of some other departments budget anyway

Seems that if there is no actual penalty for (b), then (b) is the obvious choice and it's going to keep happening, which I think is kind of a big deal. It should either be illegal with penalties to suit, or legal and let them do it without any fuss.

If you threw some rubbish on the ground and were caught, and the only penalty was that you had to pick your rubbish up again, where is the incentive to stop doing it again? (assuming you are too lazy to do the right thing in the first place without some incentive)

Re:What does that mean?

[chromaexcursion]

A corporation's board of directors are legally responsible for the company's actions.
Failure to appear when subpoenas are issued will have serious consequences for the billionaires.
You can't just send a lawyer to represent you in a criminal court.
Forcing the people that run the company to show up in court will send a message.

Robber baron corporate fucktards

[wbr1]

In Q2 2010, (around when the dumping was occurring), Exxon reported its worst quarterly profits in years. Some might say that explains this, while not excusing this. Corporate pressure to cut budgets was driving lower managers, etc. However, in that -low- quarter, guess how much net profit (not gross revenue) they reported?

6.86 billion dollars

(source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/01/exxon-2q-profit-lowest-since-2010/2608403/ )

Yep. In one fucking poor quarter they earned nearly 7 billion in profit. But could not bother to dump waste properly. And this was in the USA, with relatively strict, if often bought, environmental laws and protections. Can you imagine what companies like this do in places that do not care or cannot afford enforcement? Where the African dictator of the month just wants a few million to arm his army of children that go village raping?

This is the type of activity we should be pursuing and punishing. Not Syria, let them kill each other off if they want, lets not make enemies of both sides by dropping bombs and killing innocents (which does happen). Not pot smokers and growers. Not lil Suzy mp3 torrenter. Not Aaron Swartz. Not Snowden.

Anyway, I am done ranting, if you stayed through it you can go back to Football/Idol/TMZ now. Cheers

Pardon?!

[SIR_Taco]

"The inspectors discovered a plug removed from a tank, allowing the wastewater to run onto the ground, polluting a nearby stream." ...
“There was no intentional, reckless or negligent misconduct by XTO.”'

Not intentional.... okay.
Not reckless nor negligent?! I think someone needs to check the meaning of those words in a non-lawyer dictionary.

Re:Pardon?!

[thegarbz]

Not reckless nor negligent?! I think someone needs to check the meaning of those words in a non-lawyer dictionary.

These imply intent. Reckless and negligent are words used to describe plants with poor operating controls, poor maintenance, and large problems caused by cost cutting. The inspectors found something, so now they look at the inspection scheme they have, they identify if the inspections were sufficient, if the company would have found the problem themselves and fixed it, or simply ignored it, and they would also look at the company's history of self reporting.

You can spill a lot more and not be "negligent". Some things are "accidents". You can spill a lot less and definitely be negligent too.

I won't form an opinion either way based on a soundbite from Bloomberg. I wasn't there and I don't know any of the circumstances.

So this time they got caught

[Required Snark]

What are the chances that this is the only time they screwed up? I expect that this is standard operating procedure, and they only work legally when they know someone is going to show up.

I wonder what would happen if the fine was large and applied to fund more random inspections. I think it would show they are routinely flaunting the law. If there was any effective law enforcement it might even show a criminal conspiracy. Fortunately no one has to worry about that, because the real outcome will be the result of political pressure to stop inspections.

Attorney general

[mysidia]

attorney general’s statement showed. “Criminal charges are unwarranted and legally baseless,”

Of course they won't prosecure.

Professional courtesy.

From one criminal to another. The big banks were also afforded this courtesy, of arbitrary refusal to prosecute by the US AG.

Re:Now what?

[edibobb]

1. Almost any swimming pool will have a some chlorides, such as sodium chloride. The ocean has even more. Salt water is a common by-product in oil and gas wells.
2. The article says "Wastewater discharged from natural-gas wells can contain chlorides, barium, strontium and aluminum", not that it does. That is hype.
3. Some idiot pulled a plug in a waste tank. It's not a corporate conspiracy. No major oil company would risk dumping wastewater like that.

The plug was left out, that is negligent

[h4rr4r]

Not maintaining your equipment is pretty much the definition of negligence.