Disaster in China, oil spill

On Friday, two oil pipelines exploded while an oil tanker was unloading outside Dalian City, China. The spill covers an area of appr0ximately 71 miles, and low end estimates of the amount of oil spilled are around 1,500 to 1,650 tons of crude oil (or about 11,000-12,500 barrels). The explosions last for about 15 hours and created flames about 30 meters high (video here). No people were hurt and the leaks have been stopped, but now the clean up begins.

So in the past couple of months, we have seen the worst oil spill in American history in the Gulf, and oil spill in Salt Lake City, Utah that spilled 785 barrels into streams, parks and backyards, and now this explosion in China. This is not to mention all the oil spills across the world that escape media attention because they are poorly monitored, like the five decades of oil spills in Nigeria. Oh, and don’t forget the 27,000 abandoned and unmonitored oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of an energy system that is inherently unsafe and unstable. Disasters like these will continue to to occur, unless we actually start to get off oil.