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“North Dakota, the nation’s No. 2 oil producer behind Texas, recorded nearly 300 oil pipeline spills in less than two years, state documents show. None was reported to the public, officials said.”
– Huffington Post, Nearly 300 Pipeline Spills In North Dakota Have Gone Unreported To The Public Since January 2012.
“There were 300 pipeline spills in North Dakota from January 2012 to the present, none of which were made public by officials, according to the AP. Most of those spills were small in size. There’s one spill in particular that seems to have grabbed the AP’s attention: a massive — 865,000 gallon — oil spill from a Tesoro Logistics pipeline in the state last month, which covered several acres of a nearby farm. That spill raised some substantial questions about the ability of private oil companies to detect and correct infrastructure problems before something bad happens. It turns out that it also took the state 11 days to say anything about the spill, only doing so in response to questions from the press. The spills are just one portion of 750 undisclosed oil field “incidents” since 2012. Of all these incidents, only a road accident involving an oil truck was reported publicly.
Recent estimates suggest that North Dakota has as much as 7.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, indicating that the current oil industry boom in the state has some staying power there. The state’s Health Department is currently reviewing its public reporting policies, including the threshold used to determine whether a spill is severe enough to warrant public notification.”
– Atlantic Wire, North Dakota Keeps its Oil Spills Nice and Quiet.
“Democrats in North Dakota are seeking legislation that would make it mandatory for the state to report all oil and other hazardous spills and leaks to the public, regardless of their size.
The announcement of the legislation comes less than a week after an AP investigation discovered nearly 300 oil spills and 750 “oil field incidents” had gone unreported to the public since January 2012. It also comes just a few weeks after a 20,000-barrel pipeline spill in a North Dakota field — a spill that was discovered by a farmer, not the pipeline company or government regulators. It took North Dakota officials nearly two weeks to announce the spill’s existence to the public.
Right now, regulators in North Dakota aren’t required to make information about oil spills public. Companies must notify the state of all spills, but the state is under no obligation to then notify the public of the spills. It’s usually only if the spill is a threat to public safety or the environment that it is disclosed to the public. That isn’t uncommon among oil-producing states: Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas also aren’t required to disclose oil spills, according to the AP.”
– Think Progress, North Dakota Lawmakers Want To Make All Oil Spills Public.
“As it turned out, a Tesoro Logistics pipeline had ruptured, spreading more than 865,000 gallons of oil across seven acres of Mr. Jensen’s farm. The spill is one of the largest inland oil pipeline accidents in the United States.”
– The New York Times, Oil Spill in North Dakota Raises Detection Concerns.
“Tesoro Logistics — the company whose pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons of fracked Bakken Shale oil in rural North Dakota in September — has hired infamous contractor Witt O’Brien’s to oversee its clean-up of the biggest fracked oil spill in U.S. history.”
– Desmogblog.com, Firm with History of Spill Cover-Ups Hired to Clean Up North Dakota Oil Spill.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
