ExxonMobil Mess: Refinery Spews Oil Into Suburban Skies

By JoshMogerman in News on Oct 20, 2012 9:15PM

Oil-slicked roads gave southwest suburban drivers a serious headache when ExxonMobil’s refinery shut down roads for much of the day Friday after belching gasoline and oil into the air for nearly a half hour. It remains to be seen if the event becomes a more serious headache as the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency continues testing in the area, though the refinery has made clear that they do not believe there are any health issues:

ExxonMobil released a statement saying a "non-toxic, oil-based product has been released into the air" but the "leak/mist has been stopped."

The company "deployed industrial hygienists to monitor the area and no health impacts have been identified," according to the statement, which described the product released into the air as "gasoline and heavier material that is part of the crude oil refining process."

Roads in the Joliet area were not the only things slicked, with one nearby resident telling the Sun-Times that a neighbor's home “looked like someone took a power sprayer and sprayed oil on it.”

The ExxonMobil mess continues an ugly trend for area refiners, which have been plagued with an array of weird and troubling incidents this year, including multiple fires and the distribution of millions of gallons of tainted gas at BP’s refinery in Whiting, Indiana as well as a historic gas price spike resulting in part from outages in local refineries. Like those incidents, you can expect to pay for this event as it has already contributed to a five cent per gallon spike at area gas stations.

And if, like us, you wonder WTF an industrial hygienist is... well, read up.