Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
Sorry, missed this, but yeah, the spills are such a small percentage of total volume carried that they are virtually zero. There's always room for improvement, but there are likely industries that impact the environment more in proportion to their economic value.
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Cost in terms of lost revenue (i.e. oil lost in the spill that could have been sold had it reached its destination) are perhaps negligible.
However, cost to the environment is high, not just the palpable economic costs of soil remediation, but damage to environment, to animals and their habitat, to the water table, lakes, streams, etc., is not calculable in financial terms. However, it is extremely high in terms of overall effect on the environment and living creatures (including humans) in the vicinity of the spill. In other words, ANY spill is not acceptable.
How does that stack up against rail, in terms of quantity of oil spilled, and frequency of spillage? I don't have the data, but I'm sure it's out there.