Eleven years after the aging Pegasus pipeline cracked open in a Mayflower subdivision, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude, the state and federal governments sued ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. on Friday. And a proposed settlement is expected to be filed soon.
John Marks, acting general counsel for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said late Friday that the proposed settlement, called a consent decree, could be filed in U.S. District Court in Little Rock “by next week.” The proposal would be subject to a judge’s approval.
The Pegasus pipeline ruptured March 29, 2013, between two houses in Mayflower’s Northwoods subdivision, sending oil throughout much of the middle-class neighborhood and into drainage ditches and a cove of Lake Conway. The Game and Fish Commission owns and manages the 6,700-acre manmade lake in Faulkner County.
The 850-mile-long pipeline, most of it manufactured in 1947-48 or shortly thereafter, ran from Patoka, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas, and was shut down after the spill. The metal used in the underground pipeline is no longer made.
“The split in the pipe was [22] feet long and caused approximately 3,190 barrels of heavy crude oil mixed with diluent to spill from the Pipeline,” the lawsuit says. “The Pipeline spilled oil for approximately twelve hours over two days.
“Crude oil from the Pegasus Pipeline spilled directly into a residential neighborhood
and then flowed via a ditch into nearby waterways, including an unnamed creek, then to wetlands which are adjacent to a portion of Lake Conway commonly known as Dawson Cove.”
The oil spill, which left some residential lawns resembling small lakes of mud, forced residents to evacuate 22 houses in the subdivision. ExxonMobil subsequently bought numerous homes in the neighborhood and demolished at least three of them because of oil beneath the foundations. According to ExxonMobil, the accident caused $57 million in property damage. Hundreds of birds, turtles, mammals, fish, snakes and other wildlife died, many euthanized.
Plaintiffs are the federal government, the state Game and Fish Commission, the state Department of Energy and Environment, and the state Division of Environmental Quality against ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. and Mobil Pipe Line Co.
You can read the full complaint here.
Any monetary settlement would be in addition to a $5.07 million agreement made in August 2015 between ExxonMobil and the state and federal governments. A federal regulatory agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA,) also fined the corporation $2.63 million in late 2013. ExxonMobil appealed and got the fine reduced. In 2019, PHMSA closed the case after Exxon paid a $1 million fine for not adequately maintaining the pipeline, according to Inside Climate News.
None of these payments likely had or will make a dent in ExxonMobil’s income. The Houston-based oil giant reported that its 2023 earnings totaled $36 billion.
Exxon has since sold the pipeline to Energy Transfer, according to a March 2023 article by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit organization promoting pipeline safety.
In March 2023, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Max Shilstone, director of government affairs for Energy Transfer, told Central Arkansas Water in a letter dated May 23, 2022, that his company has “no plans to bring the pipeline back into service at this time.” The newspaper quoted Shilstone as saying market conditions did not warrant restarting the line.
The underground pipeline runs through about 13.5 miles of Lake Maumelle’s watershed. The lake provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people in Central Arkansas.