267,000 Gallon Oil Spill: Undetected for Days

267,000 gallons of crude leaked from a pipe in Alaska - and went undetected for days.

The largest oil spill to occur on the tundra of Alaska's North Slope has deposited up to 267,000 gallons of thick crude oil over two acres in the sprawling Prudhoe Bay production facilities, forcing cleanup crews to work in temperatures far below zero to vacuum and dig up the thick mixture of snow and oil.

267,000 gallons of crude leaked from a pipe on an oilfield.

The spill went undetected for as long as five days before an oilfield worker detected the acrid scent of hydrocarbons while driving through the area on March 2, Maureen Johnson, the senior vice president and manager of the Prudhoe Bay unit for BP, said at a news conference in Anchorage on Tuesday.

Large Oil Spill in Alaska Went Undetected for Days

POLL

The decision-makers, authorities-in-power, and corporate CEO's are the same guys who:

1. Wouldn't clean their own rooms as teenagers. Yes or No?

2. Blamed a buddy whenever they got into trouble. Yes or No?

3. Deny the evidence when their wives catch them cheating. Yes or No?

4. Expect somebody else to bail them out - and pick up the tab - whenever they get into trouble. Yes or No?

An oil spill this month in Alaska, the largest ever on the North Slope, has raised new concerns among state and federal regulators about whether BP has been properly maintaining its aging network of wells, pumps and pipelines that crisscross the tundra.

BP Exploration Alaska, the subsidiary of the international oil giant that operates the corroded transmission line from which more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil leaked, has been criticized and fined in several different cases, most recently in 2004 when state regulators fined the company more than $1.2 million. ..."When we inspected the line in September 2005, points of manageable corrosion were evident and all were within standards of operations integrity," Mr. Beaudo said in an e-mail message. "Something happened to the corrosion rates in that line between September 2005 and the time of the spill that we don't yet fully understand."

Mr. Hamel said: "Whatever I've been able to help the technicians publicize, they've fixed. Whatever we're not publicizing, we don't fix. They delay, and they schedule for next year. Everything's scheduled for next year. That way, if something goes, like in this case, they say, 'We scheduled that.' "

Oil Spill Raises Concerns on Pipeline Maintenance