Massive 2013 Oil Spill in North Dakota Still Not Cleaned Up
Three years and three months later, a massive oil spill in North Dakota still isn't fully cleaned up. The company responsible hasn't even set a date for completion.
Though crews have been working around the clock to deal with the Tesoro Corp. pipeline break, which happened in a wheat field in September 2013, less than a third of the 840,000 gallons that spilled has been recovered — or ever will be, North Dakota Health Department environmental scientist Bill Suess said.
A farmer, Steve Jenkins, who'd smelled the crude oil for days, discovered the spill in his northwestern North Dakota field near Tioga — his combines' tires were covered in it.
While the nearest home was a half-mile away and the state said no water sources were contaminated and no wildlife hurt, one of the largest onshore oil spills recorded in the U.S. serves for some as a cautionary example, especially given a recent pipeline break about 150 miles south and ongoing debates over the four-state Dakota Access pipeline.
"What happened to us happened and we can't go back," said Patty Jensen, Steve's wife. This month's pipeline break in Belfield, which belched an estimated 176,000 gallons of oil into a creek that feeds into the Little Missouri River, a tributary of the Missouri River, really rankled her.
"But I get really upset when I hear of a new one and I wonder what is being done to prevent these spills," she said.
Both the Tesoro break and the Belfield break occurred on 6-inch steel pipelines — a part of a large network pipelines that crisscross western North Dakota's oil patch. By comparison, the Dakota Access pipeline is made of 30-inch steel and will carry nearly 20 million gallons daily.
The Tesoro spill was not far from where oil was first discovered in North Dakota in 1951.The Texas-based company and federal regulators have said a lightning strike may have caused the 2013 rupture in the pipeline, which runs from Tioga to a rail facility outside of Columbus, near the Canadian border.
North Dakota regulators initially thought just 750 barrels of oil was involved in the spill, but later updated the amount exponentially. They also expanded the affected acreage from about 7 — the size of seven football fields — to about 13 acres, Suess said. The cleanup has cost Tesoro more than $49 million to date and is expected to top $60 million, according to recent filings to the state.
Tesoro spokeswoman Destin Singleton said she could not immediately confirm the numbers, and noted the cleanup completion date remains unknown. The pipeline was monitored remotely, but the company has said the spill wasn't detected.
Crews have had to dig as deep as 50 feet to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of oil-tainted soil, Suess said. The company has now switched to special equipment that cooks hydrocarbons from crude-soaked soil in a process called thermal desorption before putting it back in place.
The Dec. 5 spill on the Belle Fourche pipeline also was discovered by a landowner. Crude oil migrated about almost 6 miles from the spill site along Ash Coulee Creek, and fouled an unknown amount of private and U.S. Forest Service land along the waterway. Seuss said it appears no oil got as far as the Little Missouri River, and no drinking water sources were threatened.
It's not yet clear why monitoring equipment didn't detect the leak, according to Wendy Owen, a spokeswoman for Casper, Wyoming-based True Cos., which operates the pipeline.
The Dakota Access pipeline builder, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, has said the project will be safe and that workers remotely monitoring the pipeline will be able to shut it down if a leak is detected.
Owen said didn't know how long it would take to clean the Belle Fourche spill, given that wintry weather was slowing down the progress, or how much it would cost.
Patty Jensen is aware of the glacial pace of oil spill cleanups. For more than three years, it's been part the couple's life.
"They are there working away 24 hours a day, seven days a week — it's pretty amazing," she said. "The noise from the equipment used to bug us but we've grown used to it."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/massive-2013-oil-spill-north-dakota-cleaned-44266811
The downside of the ''safe'' pipelines.
The section of the pipeline that leaked was not required to have leak detectors, and it didn't.
A recent study showed that leak detectors only ID's leaks in less than 25% of cases.
The latest leak in North Dakota the pipeline had leak detectors but they didn't detect the leak. 176,000 gallons of oil flowed into a creek feeding the Little Missouri River.
We need better leak detection systems, for sure! If it can't detect 176,000 barrels, what CAN it detect? Nothing. And all sections should have leak detection systems on it...
A Lightning strike caused this? What was it, draped through the trees? ARGHHH!
People are so short sighted. They hear domestic oil and think that it's a great idea. What they don't get is that these oil companies don't follow regulations, take shortcuts, and don't give a damn about the locals or the environment. A major oil spill by any water source would be a total disaster.
And here is food for thought. When you heat your house with oil, and have an underground tank, you have to have it tested for leaking and if you convert to natural gas, you must get that tanks pumped and then filled with sand to protect the ground. Any home found with oil in their ground, is unsaleable until all that ground is removed professionally. If we take that much care for the dirt around our homes (oil is a known carcinogen), why are we so les a faire about oil near our water supply. Hint: big oil has done some greasing of it's own.
Excellent point Perrie. In addition to the oil leaks, there is another huge problem...The leaking of brine water that used in fracking.
North Dakota has had a number of these that were massive.
Fracking is also dangerous around known fault lines but they do it anyway, sometimes even causing explosions.
Oklahoma anyone.
Dowser,both of these pipelines where 6 inches in diameter. The NAPL pipeline is 30 inches in diameter. Can you imagine if it leaked for the time that these did the flow into the Missouri River?
Oh yes... I can imagine it. A MESS for sure! Widespread damage and loss of life, human and wild.
I can't imagine how this will ever be 'fixed', when the truth of the matter is, it can't be.
The DAPL is to carry 450,000 barrels per day. If it leaked for 3 hours that would be somewhere around 6,000 (252,000 gallons) barrels of oil leaking into the Lake Oahe and/or the Missouri River.
Yes. I think it is a bad idea!
Oil and gas extraction in and of itself is pretty destructive of land. A wellsite, of either variety, will permantently destroy an acre of land at a minimum. Then there are the roads to the wells and so on. Pipeline leaks are simply more destructive in one fell swoop, not the death of a thousand cuts that the wells themselves are.
Not to diminish the enormity of the destruction of land and water by a leak. I just take a broader look at things now than I did years ago.
Your correct Steve. There is a lot of collateral damage when it's comes to pipelines.
I grew up in the Texas panhandle and Permian Basin. Seen my fair share of rigs, christmas trees, pump stations and tank batteries. Tank batteries can be almost as bad as a pipline. They usually leak slower, and may not be noticed for quite some time. Tank batteries are used where there is no pipline. Trucks come in to haul it off. ( Just in case someone doesn't know what they are. )
Tank batteries...a silo for oil storage.
It seems every power source has its dangers. You should never live near high tension power lines, because of radiation. Coal pollutes the air. I don't know about the dangers of natural gas unless it's apt to explode. Even burning logs in a fireplace for heat is going to pollute the air. Wind turbines kill birds. Nuclear plants? Chernoble and the Japenese one, and how about 3 Mile Island? I guess solar power is the only safe one. Maybe I need to live in Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water House and put in a water wheel to run a turbine for a private power supply.
Most all do have dangers Buzz.. The point here is that the pipelines have been touted as very safe for a long time. What we are seeing is that they are not so safe, and endangering water supplies is a huge factor to consider when pipelines are put in.
Right now in the US we have pipelines that are very old, and more and more are leaking/exploding.
Maybe Arkansas Hermit has the right idea. He lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods.
He lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods.
And only drives around 360 miles a year, (5 or 6 trips to town & back). Fell up the gas tank about twice a year.
Don't worry guys, I'm doing my best to save everyone. (smile)
LOL