Petcoke Piles In the Public Eye
By JoshMogerman in News on Mar 1, 2014 9:00PM
Petcoke remains in the news. In D.C. and Detroit, the oil refining remnants continue to get attention with a Chicago advocate briefing Senators and congressional staffers on concerns over the mounds on the Southeast Side. Petcoke pilers have also been doing their darndest to re-ignite the controversy of mounds along the Detroit riverfront.
But it seems to be our town’s mess that is making the biggest waves online.
As VICE Magazine extended its edgy billion dollar media empire into a new online venture bringing the socially-conscious news gathering of their HBO show to a daily YouTube-delivered format, it chose Chicago’s petcoke problem as one of the first issues it would tackle along with unrest in Ukraine and fighting in Afghanistan…
The powerful piece has captured so many eyeballs (nearly 20,000 in less than two days at the time this posted) that TransCanada is buying ad space before the clip to pimp their controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Ironic, as the fight over that pipeline is centered on the same type of petroleum used at BP’s Whiting, IN refinery, the source of the petcoke in Chicago…