400-500 gallons of acid spills from Halliburton truck onto highway (CO)

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

CLIFTON (AP) - Authorities in Mesa County are working to clean up hundreds of gallons of acid that fell from a truck early Wednesday morning.

Assistant fire chief Greg Martin says two containers carrying the acid belonging to the Halliburton Company fell off a truck on Colorado 141 about a mile-and-a-half south of Interstate 70.

Martin says between 400 and 500 gallons spilled when the containers broke. He said about 300 gallons went into a storm drain that eventually flows into the Colorado River.

By about 7 a.m., the road had reopened.

Crews from the Halliburton Co., were on scene to help with the cleanup, Martin said. Also on site were crews from the Grand Junction Fire Department, Colorado State Patrol, and state Department of Transportation.

Martin says Halliburton uses the acid for drilling processes.

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=e52803c3-0abe-421a-00e7-e0d095b6e2bc&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

MKJ

[Enraged_Ape]

1. This is what no-bid contracts are all about

When you don't have to compete for business, you don't have to try. You don't have to do crap.

Are you loving this, lurking conservatives?

[hlthe2b]

2. Great.. just great... so now we (in CO) can pay for the long term

effects... Damn, it never ends, does it?

[stepnw1f]

3. This Is One Reason We Need Unions

OVERSIGHT.... it's good for business and good for American tax payers. Your money is better served.

[NashVegas]

4. Bloody Hell

Haliburton - home grown terrorism.

[Singular73]

5. Why am I not suprised that Halliburton trucks would be driving around with

Acid lol.

Its like they are working for the Penguin on Batman lol

[htuttle]

9. Heck, I bet they wear matching turtlenecks and bowler hats...

....back at the Halliburton 'lair'.

[TX-RAT]

14. several company's do the same thing.

Do you know what it's used for?
Do you know what type acid it is?

[SledDriver]

6. Halliburton gets to dump a couple of hundred gals of acid for free.

Beats paying to dispose of it properly...

[Cronus Protagonist]

38. Yeah, and why is my orange juice so tangy this morning? n/t

[gilpo]

7. Who will get the no bid contract to clean it up?

[Tight_rope]

11. LOL...Good one!...n/t

[newyawker99]

18. Hi gilpo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[gratuitous]

19. Gotta pay Halliburton's invoice first

Premature delivery of acid ahead of schedule, and pre-mixed with the Colorado River. I'd say the people of Colorado should consider that they got off cheap if Halliburton charges them only a few million for the acid delivery.

[wtbymark]

8. so every fish in that section of the CO river

will be dead if not already - nice

[htuttle]

10. Not to mention the fact...

...That half of the south west gets most of their water out of that same river.

[SledDriver]

12. Uh-oh!

:tinfoilhat:

[Ready4Change]

13. Call out all the Science Fair kids!

They'll dump a couple tons of baking soda into those sewers and Colorado will have a new volcano.

Plus, Halliburton can write it off as a charitable donation to the school system.

Every body wins!

[Nihil]

39. OK, so now I have to ...

... wipe the coffee off my screen ...! Good one!

:spray:

[Ready4Change]

42. Have a good morning.

A fresh cuppa, too. :)

:donut:

[Syncronaut Seven]

15. What kind of acid? Citric? Nitric? Hydrofluoric?

One will keep you from getting colds, yet others will dissolve your bones from the inside out in minutes.

Interesting that the article doesn't mention specifics, like the type and strength of the acid, whether the haulers were licensed and the load signed correctly.

citations? Will someone lose their job? Perspiring minds want to know.

[TX-RAT]

16. Most likely 30% HCL

It's used all the time in the oil business. Considering the PH of the soil in that region, it would dilute quickly.

[truthisfreedom]

17. my god, can you imagine if 400 gallons of hydrofluoric acid got loose?

i googled "acid for drilling" and found this page... what kind of acid dissolves rock?

http://www.halliburton.com/esg/sd0923.jsp

[SidDithers]

28. Yikes...that would be very, very bad...

HF is nasty stuff.

Sid

[are_we_united_yet]

20. Sounds like a job for

Halliburton Cleanup crew! I wonder if they can get the contract?

Oh wait.....

[cassiepriam]

21. Time to write them a $2 billion check to help clean up the mess.

Isn't that what Cheney would say?

[Javaman]

22. Everytime I read a story like this I think of Close Encounters...

In that movie, the gov't had some sort of chemical spill or toxic release that caused people to evacuate from the Devils Tower area.

Now, I'm always suspicous of this various spills, explosions and accidentally released gases.

[RawMaterials]

23. man everyones

going to be trippin for a long time :evilgrin:

[cmdrxog]

29. was my first thought too,

rocky mountain high, courtesy of Halliburton, hey Sandoz was corporate too.

[rainidame]

24. I notice no mention of the type of acid,

Since this could be extremely important as to the ultimate danger level, I wonder why no one named it. . .maybe it is some really bad stuff and they don't want us to know how carelessly it is being handled. Or it could just be water which is officially an acid, albeit a very weak one. But it seems to me if it was one of the more harmless ones, the name of it would have been told and the weakness of it mentioned.

[goforit]

25. OMG!!!!.........This is horrific.

[louis-t]

26. Let's see.."Air around WTC is OK", "Iraq will be a cakewalk",

"Saddam has WMD", "What global warming?", "Medicaid bill will only cost $395 bil" I'd say track record is not very good. Wait for the lies to start.

[SidDithers]

27. The river will dilute its corrosive properties...

but without knowing the type of acid, we can't know the other affects it might have on the environment.

Then I found this from another source:

“It’s an acid base, and it is caustic, but as far as being the really bad stuff, it isn’t that bad,” he said.

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2005/10/12/acid_spill_for_web.html

acid? base? caustic? :wtf:

Sid

[anitar1]

30. In other words, it won't harm birds or animals who

drink from the river? sure , it won,t.

[SidDithers]

33. That's not what I said, and I think you know it...

What I said is that the river will dilute it so that the acid will lose it's corrosivity. You do know how the pH scale works, don't you?

As both aTm_exrugger and TX-RAT have posted, it was probably hydrochloric acid, which is the same stuff we put into our swimming pools. The toxicological effects of HCl are much less worrisome than with other types of acids (hydrofluoric for example).

As far as industrial spills and environmental concerns go, this is a fairly mild one.

Sid

[aTm_exrugger]

31. In the oil business, they use a lot of rather weak acid.

5-30% HCL generally speaking.

This is for acidizing job, prior or during a Production Enhancement, Stimulation, or fracturing job. (all same thing, different names)

What the acid is for is to enhance communication between the formation and the casing (pipe going from surface to the payzone).
It is also used to eat up the formation allowing more hydrocarbon recovery, which makes alot of wells in the US economical to produce.


Let me defend halliburton for a second. Read the entire thing before you flame me. There are two companies within Halliburton, ESG and KBR. KBR is the corrupt pieces of crap that every one rails on. And for good reason. ESG is the ENERGY SERVICES GROUP which provides drilling and completion services to private companies. Many people within the ESG group do not like Cheney because of the KBR/Dresser aquisitions. He basically screwed the company and left. Before you bitch about Halliburton, think about which group it is.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

32. So, would ESJ be responsible for the clean up? I really appreciate

the detailed info, I wasn't aware of ESJ until your post. It sounds like there may have been a hostile or unchallenged takeover of ESJ.

TIA for your answer, and I'm hoping that it was a "weak" acid, myself. MKJ

[aTm_exrugger]

34. Some halliburton history.

Halliburton started out as a well cementing company. They expanded into tools, logging, fracturing, basically all of the technology driven well services. In 62. halliburton bought Brown and Root, in '98 Halliburton bought Dresser and Kellogg. Around this time, the company was re-organized into two main companies, Enery Services Group which provides the drilling and completion services and KBR, which provides construction services for government and energy.

What i was trying to get at is that alot of people in ESG is proud of the energy services group, because it is pretty much the best at fluid services (frac and cement), and has been for a long time. All the KBR has done for these guys is give halliburton a bad name, and all dresser has done was increase the liability of the company.

If you want to know what ESG does, look as Schlumberger, BJ Services, and Weatherford. They are the major competitors.

[aTm_exrugger]

35. Forgot to answer your post.

Halliburton will hire a third party to clean up as per Colorado environmental standards. These vary per state. This will be recorded via OSHA and DOT. Too many red flags from either agency will result in serious problems for Halliburton. The worst would be the revocation of Halliburton's HAZ-MAT license, since everything that is pumped is pretty much HAZ-MAT.

In order to prevent repercussions, there will probably be some procedure changes in the way the chemicals are loaded and hauled.

[saigon68]

40. No Flame here

Halliburton (does-- did) make some quality products. They at one time--- maybe still do make excellent aluminum cases for precision instruments.

I know about the B&R later KBR thugs who give old company its deserved bad name.

[Massacure]

36. Is this the same acid they removed from Cheney in surgery last week?

:shrug:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

37. When I think of Halliburton, I think quality.

Not corners cut for profit.

:myachingside:

[LatinoSocialist]

41. man dripping in the acid gets runover

by a car reportedly driven by a futuristic cop, who ran him over saying the words, "thank you for your cooperation".

News at 11.

[seed]

43. Halliburton and Encana in Western CO

This is just a small sample of the huge battle thats been happening in western colorado. Halliburton and Encana have been busy in Garfield and Mesa County, and plan to increase their already high concentration of wells in that area (drive down I-70 west of rifle at night, you can't miss the wells). These companies intend to extract as much gas as possible as quickly as possible and for as little personal cost to them as they can get away with. They use toxic chemicals to frac the soil, and have been cited numerous times for negligence in containing these toxins. They are drilling into an area where a subteranean nuclear device was detonated. They have been buying up mineral rights from locals, and have cut deals with the local government for a meager percentage of their profits: not nearly enough to compensate for the ecological and health issues created by their wells. This spill is just a small part of a much larger issue involving oil companies in western colorado. for more information google grand valley citizen's alliance.

[slay]

44. Oh man I thought they meant LSD

I was getting all excited. Ready to jump in my car and drive on down even. :evilgrin: