Infrastructure update

Aging Oil Rigs, Pipelines Expose Gulf to Accidents

Roughly half of the Gulf's more than 3,000 production platforms are 20 years old or more, and a third date back to the 1970s or earlier, long before the development of modern construction standards. More than half have been operating longer than their designers intended, according to federal regulators.

Older structures are more prone to accidents, especially fires, and more dangerous for workers. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal accident records, platforms that are 20 years old or more accounted for more than 60% of fires and nearly 60% of serious injuries aboard platforms in 2009.

Saudi Urban Projects Are a Window to Modernity

Just off a desert road about an hour’s drive from this port city, an enormous arched gate capped by three domes rises out of the sand like the set for a 1920s silent film fantasy. It is, instead, a fantasy of contemporary urban planning, the site of what one day will be King Abdullah Economic City, a 65-square-mile development at the edge of the Red Sea. With a projected population of two million, the city is a Middle Eastern version of the “special economic zones” that have flourished in places like China.

The city is one of four being laid out on empty desert around this country, all scheduled for completion by 2030. They follow on the heels of the country’s first coeducational university, which opened last year next to the King Abdullah site, and a financial district nearly the size of Lower Manhattan that is rising on the outskirts of the capital, Riyadh.

The Dark Lord of Coal Country: The Rolling Stone investigation that forced the resignation of Don Blankenship, the coal industry’s dirtiest CEO

On Friday, December 3rd, a week after this article was published in Rolling Stone, Massey Energy announced that Don Blankenship will be retiring as CEO and chairman. “After almost three decades at Massey, it’s time for me to move on,” Blankenship said in a statement. It’s not clear whether he was forced out, but the news took nearly everyone in coal country by surprise. An executive at the West Virginia Coal Association called the announcement “unreal,” and a leading environmentalist exulted, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!” Mineweb, an influential industry publication, noted a similarity between Blankenship’s sudden exit and that of Gen. Stanley McChrystal earlier this year: “Both men were the subjects of highly controversial profiles by Rolling Stone magazine.”

Blankenship’s exit may be part of a larger strategy to keep himself out of jail and avoid financial liability for the suffering he has caused during his decades as Appalachia’s most powerful coal baron. But it’s good news for Massey stockholders: With Blankenship out of the picture, it could now be easier to find a buyer for the coal company that he has turned into a national symbol of lethal greed.

New Report Finds Massive Drop in Road Fatalities Since 2005

Between 2005 and 2009 traffic fatalities in the United States fell from 43,510 to 33,963 — a 22 percent decline. By itself that figure is pretty impressive. But its significance grows if you know that such a steep drop over such a short span hasn’t occurred in peacetime America since the country began to keep road-safety statistics, back in 1913. In short, driving a car in the United States hasn’t been this safe since Henry Ford introduced something called the assembly line.