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DENVER, the United States, Nov. 18-- American Big Oil was quick to water down the impact of one of the biggest inland oil spills in U.S. history, but environmental groups jumped on the ecological disaster with a frenzy. TransCanada said in a news release Friday that it had scrambled more than 75 people to the site of a 210,000-gallon (795,000-liter) pipeline leak in a rural area of South Dakota the day before and crews were working "around the clock" to clean up the mess. "The oil industry has a massive history of leaks and safety problems," said Marcie Keever, Legal Director of Friends of the Earth (FOE). "It's clear that oil companies value profits over safety or protecting the environment," Keever told Xinhua Friday. "It's always been profits over people for them." Oil companies are traditionally some of the wealthiest businesses in America with Exxon Mobile ranking as the country's second largest corporation behind Wal-Mart with 2016 revenues of 197 billion U.S. dollars, according to Fortune 500. FOE is a global environmental protection organization founded in 1969 with affiliates in 75 countries that boasts having 5,000 local activist groups. Environmentalists met Thursday's announcement from TransCanada -that it had shut down its six-year-old Keystone line due to a huge underground leak in South Dakota - with dismay and disbelief. "It is time to say no to outdated fossil fuel infrastructure and invest in clean energy instead," Greenpeace's Rachel Rye Butler said in a statement Friday. | 
