While other states remain mired in the aftermath of the Great Recession, one state, thanks to the miracles of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, is experiencing an oil boom the likes of which hasn't been seen since Texas in the 1930's. Thousands of oil workers and investors now flock to North Dakota, whose rough western scrub, prairie and Badlands cover the enormous Bakken shale formation. Bakken oil has transformed North Dakota in five short years from the 6th largest oil producing state to the second. The state's wholly owned bank is now more profitable than Goldman Sachs.
North Dakota doesn't contain a whole lot of people. Situated adjacent to the Canadian border and landlocked, with few major towns, it's not much of a tourist destination. It gets extremely cold there in the winter. Many buildings in Fargo have enclosed walkways between them so you can maneuver across town without having to go outside, where a minute's exposure in February can freeze your skin. It's not a place that gets much attention, so when its residents found themselves on the receiving end of such adulation from billion dollar oil companies, offering jobs and revenue to a state where its young people spent their time daydreaming about leaving, well no one wanted to risk insulting them by bringing up the environment:
Since 2006, when advances in hydraulic fracturing — fracking — and horizontal drilling began unlocking a trove of sweet crude oil in the Bakken shale formation, North Dakota has shed its identity as an agricultural state in decline to become an oil powerhouse second only to Texas. A small state that believes in small government, it took on the oversight of a multibillion-dollar industry with a slender regulatory system built on neighborly trust, verbal warnings and second chances.
Sadly, the oil conglomerates have not proved themselves particularly well-suited for such wholesome Midwestern virtues. Like most of the Midwest, North Dakota was
stolen by the U.S. government from the Native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years. The government tried to entice the land away from the native tribes with baubles, trinkets and blankets. Now, in the rush for enormous profits, the oil companies are repeating the process towards the land's current owners, as the entire Northwestern part of the state, much of it formerly used for agriculture, is methodically being poisoned by spills and wastewater contamination, all for the fleeting promise of "jobs" and "revitalization." They are aided and abetted by a hands-off, "small government" attitude of a bought-and-paid-off Republican state government eager to cash in on the boom; so concerned, in fact, are these state officials not to offend, that they don't even bother fining the companies for polluting the land and contaminating the groundwater. As thoroughly reported in this morning's
New York Times, North Dakota, like Kansas, offers us
a clear picture of what the country would look like under industry-coddling Republican domination.
One environmental incident for every 11 wells in 2006, for instance, became one for every six last year, The Times found.
Through early October of this year, companies reported 3.8 million gallons spilled, nearly as much as in 2011 and 2012 combined.
Over all, more than 18.4 million gallons of oils and chemicals spilled, leaked or misted into the air, soil and waters of North Dakota from 2006 through early October 2014. (In addition, the oil industry reported spilling 5.2 million gallons of nontoxic substances, mostly fresh water, which can alter the environment and carry contaminants.)
Here is the
map detailing the number of spills and instances of contamination in North Dakota from 2006-2014. They include the largest on-land oil spill in American history, by the Tesoro corporation, which actually felt confident enough in its relationship with state regulators not to disclose it publically at all:
In its initial report, Tesoro seriously underestimated the contamination. A week and a half later, after a “subsurface assessment” request by the state, it tripled its estimate to 20,600 barrels, or 865,200 gallons. The lost oil had soaked a large stretch — equal to about six football fields — of the windswept land where the Jensens run cattle and rotate crops like sunflowers and sunshine-yellow canola.
The spill was publicly disclosed only after local reporters learned of it, provoking an outcry from environmentalists that led to the creation of a spills website.
Since state officials generally do not discuss or summarize the number of environmental violations attendant to the "boom," and since the number of spills are provided only by industry sources, the
Times spent nine months piecing together a comprehensive picture of the state's (for all practical purposes) complete lack of oversight of the industry. The reason for the lack of critical oversight is glaringly obvious:
North Dakota’s oil and gas regulatory setup is highly unusual in that it puts three top elected officials directly in charge of an industry that, through its executives and political action committees, can and does contribute to the officials’ campaigns. Mr. Hamm and other Continental officials, for instance, have contributed $39,900 to the commissioners since 2010. John B. Hess, chief executive of Hess Oil, the state’s second-biggest oil producer, contributed $25,000 to Gov. Jack Dalrymple in 2012.
"Mr Hamm" is Harold G. Hamm, chairman and chief executive officer of the Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, the Bakken formation's largest oil producer, and the "energy advisor" to Mitt Romney's failed 2012 Presidential campaign. Mr Hamm, described as the "wealthiest oilman in America," has had a remarkable run in North Dakota, his wells having blown out over ten times, spilling their toxic pollutants throughout the countryside, with nary a penny of fines assessed against Mr. Hamm's conglomerate by the North Dakota Industrial Commission, the state entity charged with "regulating" oil and gas production. It was only after the eleventh blowout, spewing 173,500 gallons of pollutants into Billings County, that the Commission deigned to assess a penalty against Mr. Hamm.
The penalty ultimately amounted to $7500.00. The Industrial Commission, which is made up of the governor, the attorney general, and the agricultural commissioner, all recipients of industry campaign contributions, decided to "suspend" 90 percent of the original fine of $75,000. This is described as a routine practice. Of course, Mr Hamm makes $7500 every day before he brushes his teeth, so these "penalties" are nothing more than a joke.
The impact of the state government's intertwined embrace of the oil industry is felt thus far in the injuries to workers harmed by blowouts, the contamination and sterilization of farm land and resultant shriveled crops. The article doesn't address the impact on wildlife or its potential for lasting toxic consequences of these spills to humans. But North Dakotans have little recourse:
For a North Dakotan trying to make sense of the state’s environmental and enforcement records, numbers are essentially inaccessible. The state spills site posts incidents in chronological order, without summary statistics, and it is not searchable. Oil and gas enforcement data is not made public at all, unlike in Texas, where the legislature mandates quarterly reports.
The
Times article is worth reading in its entirety as it portrays a case study in how corporations take advantage of local governments, why "limited government" is really an excuse for corporations to pollute at will, and why a "partnership" approach that relies on industry self-reporting and self-policing is a fool's errand.