The company had also constructed an unauthorized, makeshift sandbag dam and corrugated plastic pipe in an attempt to bypass the stream, according to a DEP consent order and agreement. This was removed immediately in October by the company. A new bypass system, approved by the DEP last month, includes pipes and pumps, and has been described by Jamar Thrasher, press secretary at the DEP, as substantially different from the unauthorized workaround.
Sunoco also failed to notify the DEP of multiple incidents where drilling fluid escaped beneath the surface and did not return.
Of the money going to the DEP, $490,200 went to the Clean Water Fund, and $6,800 went into the Dams and Encroachments Fund. The penalties collected won t go toward any specific project. Alongside the fines, Sunoco also had to submit a cleanup and restoration plan for the creek by the end of February.
Illinois Indigenous rights activists, tribal governments and environmentalist groups are joining a national call for the Biden administration to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline after the Illinois Commerce Commission approved a project to double its capacity last October.
The pipeline currently transports 570,000 barrels of hydrofracked oil per day from the Bakken region of North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, where it is then often shipped to oil refineries in Illinois and the Gulf Coast. In October 2020, the commission agreed to allow Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation that controls the pipeline, to add pumping stations and equipment that could transport up to 1.1 million barrels of oil per day.
An Energy Transfer Partners LP unit said Monday that it will pay $125,000 and undertake corrective actions to end claims from Pennsylvania of shoddy safety evaluations and resolve the state's order that barred the company from putting its natural gas pipeline into service.
Frozen natural-gas equipment led to the state s deadly power outages
March 2, 2021 8:00PM (UTC)
A view of high voltage transmission towers on February 21, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Millions of Texans lost their power when winter storm Uri hit the state and knocked out coal, natural gas and nuclear plants that were unprepared for the freezing temperatures brought on by the storm. Wind turbines that provide an estimated 24 percent of energy to the state became inoperable when they froze. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Some two and a half years after Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline entered service in western Pennsylvania and exploded following. Continue reading