Arkansas Exxon Oil Spill Forces Home Evacuations, Cause Under Investigation

No one saw it coming; suddenly, the streets were overrun, and the residents told to evacuate their homes. The small town of Mayflower, Ark. was still struggling to clean up Monday after a "major spill" of oil from an ExxonMobil pipeline flooded the city's streets Friday, and drenched area lawns in Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude. 

ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline, which can carry as much as 90,000 barrels of crude from Patoka, Ill. to Nederland, Texas, reportedly sprung a leak late Friday afternoon, forcing the evacuation of 22 homes. ExxonMobil said its crews responded to the leak within 30 minutes of the incident being reported. The pipe has since been capped, and crews are working to contain and clean up the bitumen oil from Pelican Lake field in northern Alberta, Canada. The cause of the break remains unclear, as does just how long cleanup will take or when the pipeline will reopen, officials said. Crews must first excavate the land around the pipeline break to adequately provide an estimate. 

"I can't speculate on when it will happen," Exxon Mobil spokesman Alan Jeffers said, according to CBS. "Excavation is necessary as part of an investigation to determine the cause of the incident."

Evacuated homeowners in the area said they were told it would be "at least a week" until before they could return to their houses.

ExxonMobil said it couldn't offer an exact estimate of how much oil was spilled, but announced it had worked to remove about 12,000 barrels of oil and water so far. The oil company did not explain how much of the total recovered was oil and how much of the number was water.

"We've just gotten used to having pipelines go through cities and counties, and you hope something like this doesn't happen. My heart goes out to all of the people personally impacted," said Faulkner County judge Allen Dodson, according to NPR.

"We're just glad that no one was injured, first and foremost, but then once the homes were evacuated, your next concern goes to property and environment," he added.

ExxonMobil said local authorities were carefully monitoring air quality to determine if there was a health risk.