When the company ceased operations in Ecuador, in 1992, it allegedly left behind hundreds of open pits full of malignant black sludge.

NEWYORKER: Reversal of Fortune

In October 2000 the floor of a 72-acre wastewater reservoir built above an abandoned mine in Kentucky collapsed, sending black sludge through the mine and out into a tributary of the Big Sandy River.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas

And building a pipeline to Turkey from Baku would be child's play compared with the Russian project, which involves laying the deepest undersea pipeline in the world, through the corrosive sludge of the Black Sea bed.

ECONOMIST: Of politics and pipelines