Arkansas attorney general launches investigation into Exxon oil spill

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel on Thursday night vowed to hold Exxon Mobil accountable after the company's pipeline ruptured and flooded a small town.

He told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that he expected oil company, not the government, to foot the bill for cleaning up the spill. McDaniel also suggested he was investigating whether Exxon was negligent.

"I think when people found out that there was a rupture and there was a 65-year-old pipeline, I think that almost everybody assumed that there was some small crack due to age," he told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. "The rupture was 22 feet long. Twenty-two feet is not something one would think would happen gradually. So now we're starting to ask all new questions."

McDaniel has already ordered the oil company turn over investigative reports, inspection reports and other information about the Pegasus pipeline, which burst in late March. The pipeline carried more than 90,000 barrels of tar sands oil from Illinois to Texas every day.

"It's not just light sweet crude, it is heavy tar sand crude," he explained. "Of course, we don't know what the solvents are. I still want to know and I don't know if they've included that in what they provided to me... but there are obviously a lot of chemicals that are incorporated into the product. I need to know what those are as well."

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