Stephen Colbert Highlights DeSmog's Exxon Arkansas Tar Sands Spill No Fly Zone Investigation

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onApr 10, 2013 @ 13:23 PDT

The Colbert Report last night featuredย DeSmogBlog‘s investigative findings on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) delegating authority over its โ€œno-fly zoneโ€ above the Mayflower tar sands spill site toย ExxonMobil โ€œaviation advisor,โ€ Tom Suhrhoff.

Stephen parodied Exxon’s secrecy at the site ofย ExxonMobil’s Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill, honing in on the fact that the โ€œprivate empireโ€ threatened a reporter at Inside Climate News with arrest when she sought to ask a spokesperson questions at the spill relief command center headed by Exxon.ย ย 

On March 29, Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline spilled up to an estimated 7,000 barrels of tar sands diluted bitumen (โ€œdilbitโ€) into Mayflower’s neighborhoods and surrounding wetlands, causing the evacuation of 22 homes.ย Exxon’s poor handling of the spill clean-up was also featured in the April 8 edition of โ€œThe Rachel Maddow Show.โ€

Check out โ€œThe Colbert Reportโ€ segment:

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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