When Big Oil Comes to a Small Town: The ExxonMobil Oil Spill in Mayflower in Context

On March 29, 2013, the day after my son was born, I received a call from a friend back home in Arkansas. It was not to congratulate my wife and I on our first born. He told me about an ExxonMobil oil spill in the city of Mayflower. He described people’s yards and driveways flooded black with oil. As of last spring, oil pipelines and oil spills for Arkansans were no longer just political talking points on the national news because reality had finally hit home. As North American oil production ramps up, it becomes ever more important to anticipate oil spills and examine how we will handle more of them. The United States will soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s number one oil producer