Current Events > North Dakota regulators appear to have covered up size of oil spill

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Officially, 10 gallons of oil leaked out of the pipeline. A whistleblower and documents suggest the real size of the spill is 11 million gallons.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/19/north-dakota-regulators-oil-gas-spill-exxon-valdez

In July 2015 workers at the Garden Creek I Gas Processing Plant, in Watford City, North Dakota, noticed a leak in a pipeline and reported a spill to the North Dakota Department of Health that remains officially listed as 10 gallons, the size of two bottled water delivery jugs.

But a whistle-blower has revealed to DeSmog the incident is actually on par with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which released roughly 11 million gallons of thick crude.

The Garden Creek spill is in fact over 11 million gallons of condensate that leaked through a crack in a pipeline for over 3 years, says the whistle-blower, who has expertise in environmental science but refused to be named or give other background information for fear of losing their job. They provided to DeSmog a document that details remediation efforts and verifies the spills monstrous size.

Up to 5,500,000 gallons of hydrocarbons have been removed from the site, the 2018 document states, based upon anestimate of approximately 11 million gallons released.

Garden Creek is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company, ONEOK Partners, and processes natural gas and natural gas liquids, also called natural gas condensate, brought to the facility via pipeline from Bakken wells.

Neither the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors coastal spills, nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could provide records to put the spills size in context, but according to available reports, if the 11-million-gallon figure is accurate, the Garden Creek spill appears to be among the largest recorded oil and gas industry spills in the history of the United States.

However, the American public is unaware, because the spill remains officially listed as just 10 gallons. That is despite the fact that a North Dakota regulator has acknowledged the spill was much larger, and even the official record, right after stating the spill was 10 gallons, notes that the area was saturated with natural gas condensate of an unknown volume, and thus may have been larger.

Scott Skokos, Executive Director of the Dakota Resource Council, an organization that works to protect North Dakotas natural resources and family farms, questioned whether it was legal for the state to cover up or downplay spills.

I have seen many instances where it appears spills are being covered up, and there appears to be a pattern of downplaying spills, which makes the narrative surrounding oil and gas development look rosy and makes the industry look better politically, says Skokos. If this pattern is as widespread as it seems, then we have a government that is conspiring to protect the oil industry. This is not only reckless and unethical, but also potentially illegal.

In my view, Skokos added, this is not looking out for the best interest of the state or the people who live in the state, it is only looking out for corporations. And these are not even corporate citizens of this state, they are corporate citizens of somewhere else.

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Antifar posted...

Officially, 10 gallons of oil leaked out of the pipeline. A whistleblower and documents suggest the real size of the spill is 11 million gallons.

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every day every single fucking day there's something to remind me that this world is simply beyond salvation. No wonder so many turn a blind eye, looking at such disgusting things while being powerless to change it would break most into the deepest darkest pits of despair.
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Capitalism rules
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Capitalism is cancer
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I honestly believe that the owners of these pipelines do not deserve to live
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life in prison
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They and others do their heinous shit because we, the common folk, let them.
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There has been all of one nuclear reactor brought on-line in in the US, over the past thirty years.

What's a million gallons between friends

The crazy, or maybe not that crazy, thing is this has been known for years. But we have to keep the big companies happy or "they might leave"

That has been used to justify a lot of shit here. Even though most of the companies wouldn't leave if they were actually held accountable. They make so much money that actually paying the proper fines would be a drop in the bucket for them. But instead they get charged like 10% of the proposed fines to keep them happy

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10 gallons, not great not terrible.

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trump cares about corps not humans.

he wont care
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