What One Oil Pipeline Spill Every Day Looks Like on a Map

Jonathan Thompson follows the news from earlier in the week that the Nebraska Public Service Commission had authorized the Keystone XL oil pipeline through the state by presenting on infographic that illustrates the scale of the environmental threat represented by oil pipelines.

"Pipelines are often touted as safer than train or truck for transporting oil and other hazardous materials. But over the last two-and-a-half years, crude oil and hazardous materials pipelines across the U.S. busted at a rate of more than once per day, through corrosion, floods, lightning, vehicles and vandals," writes Thompson.

"Some 3.6 million gallons of crude oil spilled in total, and five oil spills were as large or larger than the Keystone incident," writes Thompson, referring to an incident earlier in November that spilled 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, of crude oil from the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota.

To illustrate this point, Thompson also shares the infographic shown below, which gathers all the crude oil spills between 2015 and 2017 onto one busy map of the United States.