True, there are multiple entities involved in this: Marathon, CSX, Transflo and Moroun. Any one of which can claim "not my responsibility." But Moroun owns the land, and presumably leased it for a specific purpose. If that purpose breaks environmental laws or causes liability, the courts will have to sort out who's responsible.

Since the petcoke is piling up while awaiting shipment, my guess is that Marathon still owns the stuff, so their spokesman's claim is important. Just dumping it on property leased by someone else from someone else doesn't wipe the slate clean.

This is an interesting story, Flower. And it aint over yet. Glad you are staying with it. We touched upon the problems of shipping so much waste along with the product on Donal's blog the other day. Everything seems to be speculation and guessing. I cannot imagine a pipeline going many miles with no slope carrying that much solid crap, suspended in a mixture that needs to be kept quite warm to remain fluid enough to keep flowing, not having major problems sooner or later. Maybe it looks easy to them because sitting somewhere looking at a map on the wall it looks like the pipe runs straight down. But, it is apparently working according to plan so far.
So, we have oil leaving the refinery and mountains of coke waiting to be shipped off to be burned to give us a visual of a short time accumulation of one part of the total. I wonder how big a lake all the water that is polluted with chemicals used to help keep the whole thing  goin' would make? Where is it? That river looks mighty handy.
  There are estimates out about the carbon release from tar sands oil. I guess that burning this petroleum coke has been figured in, but from my semi-attention to the subject, I hadn't heard of it or of any bi-product also being used as fuel.