As Exxon Mobil Cleans Up Oil Spill, Fox's Crowley Suggests It Sponsor Yellowstone National Park

Following a pipeline rupture in Arkansas, Exxon Mobil is reportedly cleaning up thousands of barrels of oil in a residential neighborhood. As efforts to contain and clean the spill were ongoing, Fox News contributor Monica Crowley advocated Exxon Mobil becoming a sponsor of Yellowstone National Park, adding: the “free market solves everything.”

On the March 1 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, Monica Crowley suggested Exxon Mobil, one of the world's largest oil companies, would be an “appropriate” sponsor for one of America's largest national parks. Arguing for smaller government, she went on to compare the proposed partnership to private companies owning sports stadiums and the privatization of the US Postal Service, arguing that “profit motive” would ensure efficiency:

As Crowley made her endorsement, cleanup efforts continue in Mayflower, Arkansas, after an unspecified amount of oil leaked from an Exxon Mobil pipeline. Reuters reports that the Pegasus line “can transport more than 90,000 barrels per day” and that Exxon Mobil “had no information on when the pipeline last underwent maintenance.” From the same article:

The Pegasus pipeline, which ruptured in a housing development near the town of Mayflower on Friday, spewing oil across lawns and down residential streets, remained shut and a company spokesman declined to speculate about when it would be fixed and restarted.

Exxon, which was fined in 2010 for not inspecting a portion of the Pegasus line with sufficient frequency, had yet to excavate the area around the Pegasus pipeline breach on Monday, a critical step in assessing damage and determining how and why it leaked.