By Melissa Cronin

It’s been a rough week for energy companies. From a huge spill that deposited oil onto suburban streets in Arkansas, to the announcement of a dangerous new fracking threat, to earthquakes (earthquakes!), the oil and natural gas industries really took a beating this week. So in case you’re not up to slogging through the oil-slicked reports of corporate mischief, NYULocal has rounded up the highlights of this week’s most extraordinary energy embarrassments.

Just Another Exxon Spill

On Friday, the 65-year-old Exxon Mobil Pegasus pipeline ruptured smack in the middle of a housing development in Mayflower, Arkansas. Suburban lawns, streets, and houses were drenched in oil, spewing from the 800-mile pipeline, which carries over 90,000 barrels per day of crude from Patoka, Illinois to Nederland, Texas. Although the spill was small when compared to some of Exxon Mobil’s larger disasters, it sparked a conversation about the safety of pipelines running under residential areas — especially with the President’s upcoming decision regarding the controversial Keystone Pipeline construction.

To make matters worse, the pipeline was ferrying crude bitumen from Canada at the time of the leak — a more corrosive substance than traditional oil.

“An influx of tar sands on the U.S. pipeline network poses greater risks to pipeline integrity, challenges for leak detection systems and significantly increased impacts to sensitive water resources,” the Natural Resources Defense Council told Reuters following the spill.

Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, estimated that it has recovered 12,000 barrels of oil and water from the site so far.

Just Another Fracking Hazard

NPR reported that silica, a chemical previously identified by the government as a dangerous lung disease agent, is present at alarmingly high levels in the air around fracking sites, presenting a huge health problem for many natural gas workers.

Hydraulic fracturing, a process of natural gas extraction that involves shooting a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals far beneath the Earth’s surface to break up rock formations and release valuable gas reserves, requires an enormous sand input to operate. But this sand, it seems, is having unforeseen consequences on workers’ health.

The new study, conducted by a researcher from the National Institute of Occupation Health and Safety, documented high levels of silica in the air — higher than would be protected by the respirators that many workers wear. Surrounded by plumes of this silica dust (one of the oldest known workplace hazards), workers on fracking sites are more vulnerable to fatal lung diseases. Fracking representatives have acknowledged the problem, responding with warning signage and attempts to sequester the sand dust with vacuums.

Just…EARTHQUAKES!

There were not one, but two damning studies to come out about oil and natural gas drilling this week — and the second one is even scarier than the first. The research, which examined an earthquake that hit Prague, Oaklahoma, in 2011, found that the injection of wastewater after drilling triggered a tremor in a nearby faultline, and the subsequent record-shattering earthquake. The increased pressure on the site was pointed to as a direct trigger for the earthquake — leading many to fear future ramifications from other wells — which, thanks to the hydraulic fracturing boom, have been exploding around the country (although the well tested in the study was not drilled using the hydraulic fracturing process). This, coupled with research by the U.S. Geological Survey last year that recorded a sharp spike in seismic activity due to wastewater injection, has led many to speculate that the fracking boom will usher in a new age of earthquakes.

[Image via Calin Tatu / Shuttertstock.com]