Fortune Magazine describes the next likely oil disaster: pipeline leaks and breaks along the Gulf Coast.

Full disclosure: I remember Ixtoc I, the exploratory well off the Mexican coast owned in part by then-Governor Bill Clements.
This thing spewed ten to thirty THOUSAND barrels of crude a day into the Gulf, and actively leaked from June 3, 1979, to March 23, 1980.

For what it’s worth, I remember Exxon Valdez, too.

Not to mention a few other pipeline-and-infrastructure related oilfield disasters (life in Texas comes with some hazards that aren’t, after all, engineered by Karl Rove and Tom DeLay) including a hydrogen sulfide leak in the Permian Basin in 1975 that killed schoolmates of mine and an El Paso Gas pipeline rupture in 2000 that killed a family of 12 on a weekend campout; a few days ago the company responsible agreed to pay a $15.5 million fine as a result.

It’s time to hold the oil and gas companies accountable.
They’re raking in profits amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars per quarter. It shouldn’t fall to the state fish and wildlife departments or to city emergency management divisions or to (godhelpus) FEMA to clean up after the oil companies. Preventive maintenance is called that for a reason — it keeps bridges off the riverbeds, oil and gas in the pipelines, and people alive.