Pennzoil Oil City tank explosion and facility

The lecture's central externality example. A woman welder killed by a 1920s riveted-tank explosion at a Pennzoil refinery in Oil City, PA (downstream of Titusville). Tom's argument: Pennzoil couldn't afford to *shut down* the small money-losing refinery because environmental cleanup liability for ninety years of soil oil contamination would have cost more than continued operation. Frames the regulatory/environmental externality concept.

I'm going to give you a sort of homework assignment — you don't have to turn it in. One time, in the early 90s, I was asked to go look at an explosion that occurred and killed a woman welder, threw her across the river when this tank blew up that she was welding on, at an oil refinery in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Anybody from Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania? Oil City — what's it near? Nothing, right. But what's north of it? Titusville. You ever heard of Titusville? What happened at Titusville in the 1850s? Edwin Drake drilled for oil. First oil well in the world, in Titusville. Ever heard of Pennsylvania Oil Company, Pennzoil? This was a Pennzoil refinery just down the river from Titusville, where they first discovered oil.