The ever-present dangers of not ensuring that we are protected from oil companies being given carte blanche to do what they want.
"Five minutes later, the slick of noxious black crude spewing from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline was eight feet wide, six inches deep and growing fast.
Within half an hour, a representative from Exxon Mobil Corp was on the scene. By the next day, Exxon's agents had contacted the evacuated residents and were writing cheques for their living expenses.
Three days after the spill on the afternoon of March 29, 120 workers had descended on the town, a number that would eventually swell to more than 600 from across the country, including company doctors, communication specialists and wildlife experts.
Now, nearly two weeks after the 5000-barrel spill occurred on Good Friday, a picture has emerged of a giant oil company thrust into a small blue-collar community, intricately managing not just the cleanup of a major spill, but also using its large chequebook to try to win over the townsfolk and seek to limit the fallout.
At stake is not just the reputation of the world's largest publicly traded company, but the spill's impact on a fractious national debate about the effect of shipping increasing amounts of tarry Canadian crude across the United States."
"Five minutes later, the slick of noxious black crude spewing from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline was eight feet wide, six inches deep and growing fast.
Within half an hour, a representative from Exxon Mobil Corp was on the scene. By the next day, Exxon's agents had contacted the evacuated residents and were writing cheques for their living expenses.
Three days after the spill on the afternoon of March 29, 120 workers had descended on the town, a number that would eventually swell to more than 600 from across the country, including company doctors, communication specialists and wildlife experts.
Now, nearly two weeks after the 5000-barrel spill occurred on Good Friday, a picture has emerged of a giant oil company thrust into a small blue-collar community, intricately managing not just the cleanup of a major spill, but also using its large chequebook to try to win over the townsfolk and seek to limit the fallout.
At stake is not just the reputation of the world's largest publicly traded company, but the spill's impact on a fractious national debate about the effect of shipping increasing amounts of tarry Canadian crude across the United States."
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