Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?

picture-27344-1558471761.jpg
on

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 deliveryย 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 thickย crude.

The Garden Creek spill โ€œis in fact over 11 million gallons of condensate that leaked through a crack in a pipeline for over 3 years,โ€ 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 spillโ€™s monstrousย size.

โ€œUp to 5,500,000 gallonsโ€ of hydrocarbons have been removed from the site, the 2018 document states, โ€œbased upon anโ€ฆestimate of approximately 11 million gallonsย released.โ€

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 Bakkenย 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 spillโ€™s 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 Unitedย 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 โ€œsaturated with natural gas condensate of an unknown volume,โ€ and thus may have beenย larger.

Embed from Getty Images

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

โ€œI 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,โ€ says Skokos. โ€œIf 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 potentiallyย illegal.โ€

โ€œIn my view,โ€ Skokos added, โ€œthis 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 somewhereย else.โ€

The Challenge ofย Oversight

Spills are pervasive in North Dakotaโ€™s oil industry and have been the focus of numerous media reports. โ€œState regulators have often been unable โ€” or unwilling โ€” to compel energy companies to clean up their mess,โ€ ProPublica reported in a 2012ย investigation.

A 2015 Inside Energy article noted state reports โ€œare riddled with inaccuracies and estimatesโ€ and cited a 2011 spill of oil and gas wastewater by a Texas-based company listed as 12,600 gallons but later determined to be at least two million gallons. An eight-year database of spills compiled by the New York Times in 2014 showed two spills of roughly one millionย gallons.

But no news agency has reported on any spill in North Dakota near the magnitude of Gardenย Creek.

Moisture flare at the Obenour 1 and 2 well on the Evanson family farm in McKenzie County, North Dakota, east of Arnegard and west of Watford City.
Pumpjacks and flaringย in McKenzie County, North Dakota, east of Arnegard and west of Watford City. Credit:ย Tim Evanson,ย CC BYSAย 2.0

Gas processing plants are sprawling industrial facilities and contain numerous pipes and towers that help clean and separate the stream of natural gas and natural gas liquids like ethane, butane, and propane carried in gathering pipelines that originate atย wellheads.

The explosion of fracking across the U.S. and the booming development of Americaโ€™s gas-rich shale plays have planted gas processing plants, which emit a near-continuous stream of greenhouse gases and carcinogens, from the Pittsburgh suburbs and Ohioโ€™s Amish country to the high plains of Colorado and the badlands of Northย Dakota.

โ€œThere should be ongoing investigations of these facilities regularly,โ€ says Emily Collins, Executive Director of Fair Shake, an Ohio-based nonprofit environmental law firm. But thereย isnโ€™t.

โ€œThere is so much to keep track of for these regulators that spills, among other things, are lost in the mix,โ€ says Collins. โ€œThe old formula of having inspections and investigations where you show up once a year clearly doesnโ€™t work here, not with the pace, not with how many places are at issue all of the sudden. We are just not able to handle itย all.โ€

Map of western North Dakota that includes well density (number of wells per 5 km radius), reported brine spills from 2007 to 2015 (red circles), and sampling sites of samples collected in July 2015 (green triangles).
Map of western North Dakota that includes well density (number of wells per 5 km radius), reported brine spills from 2007 to 2015 (red circles), and sampling sites of samples collected in July 2015 (green triangles). Credit: Lauer et al.ย 2016

Meanwhile, examination of the industry, its spills, and its placid regulators has made its way to the U.S. Congress. The Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources of the Houseโ€™s Natural Resource Committee has been holding hearings on the impacts of oil and gas development on local communities, landowners, taxpayers, and the environment.ย ย 

In May, Collins testified before the subcommittee, along with 71-year-old North Dakota farmer Daryl Peterson. He shared harrowing stories about decades of spills of toxic oil and gas industry waste on his farmland, and the utter neglect of the issue by his stateโ€™sย regulators.

โ€œIn my experience, regulators have been reluctant to enforce compliance,โ€ Peterson told Congress. โ€œAnd have minimized the impacts, rather than holding the oil companiesย accountable.โ€

North Dakota Regulator Disputes Size ofย Spill

On April 29, 2019, oversight of spills shifted from the North Dakota Department of Health to a new agency, the Department of Environmental Quality, but the stateโ€™s Spill Investigation Program Manager has remained Billย Suess.

โ€œI know for a fact that Bill Suess was made aware of Garden Creekโ€™s size in October of 2018 after a 3-year investigation was completed to assess size and scope,โ€ the whistle-blower told DeSmog. โ€œBill and state staff were presented an updated version of the spill sizeโ€ฆat the state Gold Seal building in a PowerPointย presentation.โ€

In a phone conversation with DeSmog in mid-July, Suess explained that he had never seen a document showing the spillโ€™s size to be any number other than 10 gallons, and he rejected the fact that the spill was 11 millionย gallons.

โ€œThat would be by far the largest spill on land in U.S. history. I mean you are talking 261,000 barrels,โ€ Suess said. โ€œThat would be significant, and I will guarantee you it is not that volume. I have received no documentation and I have no scientific evidence to show it is anywhere near thatย volume.โ€

Suess readily acknowledged that the officially listed spill size was too low. โ€œWe know it is significantly bigger than 10 gallons. We have known that since Day One,โ€ Suess continued. Yet he defended the stateโ€™s decision to continue to list the spill as just 10ย gallons.

โ€œIn North Dakota we do not regulate based on volume,โ€ Suess added. โ€œWhether we put a 10 there, a 100 there, a 1,000 there is not going to change our response to the spill, it is not going to change what the responsible party has to do, not going to change their remediation, it is not going to change anything other than yourย curiosity.โ€

The One Million Gallon Salt Water (Brine) Spill by Crestwood, Arrow Pipeline LLC discovered July 8, 2014. Located North of Mandaree, ND.
Crestwood discovered a 1 million gallon brine spill from its Arrow pipeline on July 8, 2014. Located north of Mandaree, North Dakota,ย on the Fort Berthold Reservation.ย Mandaree is one of the six segments on Fort Berthold and where most Mandan and Hidatsa people live. Courtesy of Lisaย DeVille

DeSmog presented details of the Garden Creek spill to North Dakota environmental attorney Fintan Dooley, who leads the North Dakota Salted Lands Council, an organization dedicated to remediatingย spills.

โ€œYou got a big fish hooked here,โ€ he said. โ€œThis has all the signs of a civil conspiracy. If instead of 10, it was 110 or 1010 gallons, one could make the determination the original report was a mistake, but to leave uncorrected a mistake this big is not an accident, it smells of deception and deliberation and this is not the first incident of deceptive record-keeping in North Dakota โ€” I think a good question to ask is, how many state officials are implicated in covering up thisย story?โ€

The North Dakota Century Code, which contains all state laws, covers perjury, falsification, and breach of duty in Chapter 12.1-11. Subsection 05, โ€œTampering with public records,โ€ states theย following:

โ€œA person is guilty of an offense if he: a. Knowingly makes a false entry in or false alteration of a government record; or b. Knowingly, without lawful authority, destroys, conceals, removes, or otherwise impairs the verity or availability of a governmentย record.โ€

The offense, โ€œif committed by a public servant who has custody of the government record,โ€ is a felony. The crime carries a possible five-year prisonย sentence.

DeSmog confronted Suess with this portion of the code, and asked him if he believed he, or someone, was guilty of falsifying government records. โ€œNo, I am not guilty, but if I changed that number I would be,โ€ he said. โ€œIf I were to go in there and just change that [10 gallons] to a larger number that I donโ€™t have any scientific evidence or documentation for, then I would be falsifyingย it.โ€

The environmental attorney Fintan Dooley does not buy that officials behaved appropriately. โ€œThere has been a lot of talk around the state capitol lately about official breach of public trust, and I am just wondering how far this practice of falsification of records will be allowed to go?โ€ he said. โ€œThe whole thing can be prosecuted, and if this presents an opportunity to prosecute, I think that is just wonderful.โ€ Any decisions regarding prosecution, he stresses, are up to a stateย attorney.

When asked exactly who would be charged with a crime, Dooley said, โ€œIf anyone is going to file a criminal charge, they must file it against an individual. If there was a whole series of people involved, the best practice would be to identify all ofย them.โ€

Spill Cleanup Amid Dakota Accessย Protests

North Dakota gas flare near Watford City
Natural gas flares from a flare-head at the Orvis State well on the Evanson family farm in McKenzie County, North Dakota, west of Watford City.ย Credit:ย Tim Evanson,ย CCย BYSAย 2.0

Garden Creek I became operational in January 2012. The project was applauded by state and industry officials for its ability to reduce the release of the prominent greenhouse gas methane in the oilfield by containing and processing that and other natural gas byproducts. Flaring, or burning, natural gas is common in the regionโ€™sย oilfields.

โ€œThe completion of this facility is a positive step toward reducing flaring activities in North Dakota,โ€ ONEOK president Terry Spencer told a Watford City newspaper in 2012. In 2015, at the time the spill was noticed, ONEOK was in the process of constructing a network of additional gas processing plants across the Bakken. In one industry press release, the company bragged of โ€œbetter-than-expected plant performance at existing and planned processingย plants.โ€

โ€œThere was motive to cover up the actual size of the spill to allow their infrastructure to be completed,โ€ says the whistle-blower. Furthermore, by the summer of 2016, as the cleanup at Garden Creek I was moving along, protests against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation were in full swing. One major concern voiced by the tribe was that a spill could destroy farmland and contaminate drinking water for thousands ofย people.

On August 31, 2016, โ€œHappyโ€ American Horse from the Sicangu Nation locked himself to construction equipment as a direct action against the Dakota Access pipeline.
On August 31, 2016, โ€œHappyโ€ American Horse from the Sicangu Nation locked himself to construction equipment as a direct action against the Dakota Access pipeline.ย Credit:ย Desiree Kane,ย CCย BYย 3.0

โ€œPublic outcry against gas collection could have threatened ONEOKโ€™s expansion plans and might have stood in the way of the stateโ€™s flaring reduction goals,โ€ says the whistle-blower. โ€œItโ€™s also possible that it could have further galvanized public opinion against the DAPL project. In short, itโ€™s possible that the North Dakota Department of Health faced heavy pressure from both state and industry to keep this on the downย low.โ€

David Glatt, Director of North Dakotaโ€™s Department of Environmental Quality, said, โ€œThe state makes public all spill reports it receives, so there is no under reporting by the state.โ€ ONEOK has not responded to DeSmogโ€™s questions on this incident. DeSmog has filed an open records request with the State of North Dakota for additional information and details related to the Garden Creek Iย spill.

In July, Suess told DeSmog, โ€œRemediation is still ongoing. It is going to be a slow process, it will be a few years, I think.โ€ Suess said he was planning to revisit the spill site but did not expect anything he found there would lead him to alter the officially recorded spill size. โ€œI have a schedule to go out there later this month, but I still probably wouldnโ€™t change that 10-gallon number because I still wonโ€™t have an accurate number,โ€ heย said.

North Dakotans Grapple With Impacts ofย Spills

In May, just as North Dakotaโ€™s planting season was beginning, I met with several North Dakota residents whose farms or communities had been marred by oil and gas industry spills, including the land of farmer Daryl Peterson, whose 2,500 acres of grains, soybeans, and corn have been contaminated by more than a dozen spills ofย brine.

This oil and gas waste product is loaded with salt and also contains toxic heavy metals and radioactivity. Peterson pointed to dead zones on his land that are unfit for crops though still fit for government taxes. The spills have also tainted hisย groundwater.

Oil and gas industry brine spill impacts on Daryl Peterson's North Dakota farm.
Daryl Peterson’s North Dakota farm has suffered from more than a dozen oil and gas industry brine spills. Courtesy of Darylย Peterson

โ€œState regulators declare most spills are cleaned up to EPA standards and land productivity is restored but very often this has not been the case,โ€ said Peterson, who, together with his wife Christine, has farmed this land in Bottineau County, near the Canadian border, for more than 40ย years.

โ€œThe oil industry controls politics in North Dakota and long-term consequences to our precious land, air, and water resources are being ignored with this gold rush mentality. With the prospect of 40,000 more wells in North Dakota, the future of our bountiful agriculture state is in great jeopardy,โ€ saidย Peterson.

Suess defended his agencyโ€™s methods. โ€œWhat I believe the North Dakota public wants to know is not how big is it, but is this spill a risk to me,โ€ he said. โ€œPersonally, I have actually been told by others that we are one of the most transparent agencies out there. My boss is the North Dakota taxpayer, and my door is always open, any citizen can walk in at any time and talk toย me.โ€

However, other North Dakota residents dealing with spills strongly disagree. In May DeSmog also toured spills on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, in the heart of the Bakken oil boom in western North Dakota, with Lisa DeVille and her husband Walter DeVille Sr. The couple lives in the community of Mandaree and helps lead an environmental advocacy group called Fort Berthold Protectors of Water & Earth Rights, or POWER.

โ€œYou can see the earth slowly dying,โ€ said Lisa, who has two masterโ€™s degrees in business and returned to school to get a bachelorโ€™s* degree in environmental science so she could better monitor all the spills and contamination on her land and advocate for herย community.

โ€œEvery day we have a spill,โ€ she said. โ€œWhether it is frac sand spilled, trucks that stall out and drop their oil on roads, trucks wrecking on the road and spilling oil and gas waste product, or our invisible spill, the methane released into the air from flaring andย venting.โ€


Aerial view ofย a 1 million gallon brine spill from Crestwood’sย Arrow pipeline on July 8, 2014. Located north of Mandaree, North Dakota,ย on the Fort Berthold Reservation.ย Mandaree is one of the six segments on Fort Berthold and where most Mandan and Hidatsa peoples live. Photo credit: Sarahย Christianson

โ€œThe North Dakota Spill Investigation Program Manager can say that his door is open, but North Dakota is protecting industry, not people, and it is upsetting to me,โ€ Lisaย added.

โ€œMy people โ€” the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation โ€” have been here for centuries, there have been many broken promises, and they have been lied to and are still being lied to about all this oil and gas contamination. No one knows the amount of spills on Fort Berthold because industry will lie to our tribal leaders. Also, there is no data for the public to see. There are no studies, research, or analysis to create laws or codes for environmentalย justice.โ€

In July 2014, one million gallons of oil and gas waste spilled from a pipeline and into a ravine that drains into the tribeโ€™s main reservoir for drinking water. In a 2016 paper, Duke University researchers, including geochemist Avner Vengosh, revealed the spill, as well as several others in the Bakken, had laced the land with heavy metals andย radioactivity.

When asked in May 2019 if he was aware of this research, Glatt, director of the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, said he questioned Vengoshโ€™s โ€œinitial premiseโ€ and believed the researchers were โ€œlooking for the worst caseย scenario.โ€

โ€œI havenโ€™t seen his report; I just didnโ€™t even know it was out there,โ€ said Glatt. โ€œI knew he was in the state. This is the first time I hear that he wrote aย report.โ€

โ€˜Lack ofย Accountabilityโ€™

As lawsuits against the oil and gas industry for climate impacts continue and a growing web of grassroots groups spotlight the industryโ€™s wide arc of pollution, the uncovering of the oil and gas industryโ€™s vast closet of toxic skeletons seemsย inevitable.

โ€œUltimately I am fed up with the rushed drilling programs and the lack of accountability when it comes to environmental impacts,โ€ says the whistle-blower. โ€œI am also disgusted with how state officials and city council members view these threats and deem it acceptable to potentially harm humanย health.โ€

Why, the whistle-blower added, โ€œare we shielding the truth from publicย scrutiny?โ€

*Updated 8/20/19: This story has been updated to correct Lisa DeVille’s degree in environmental science, which is a bachelor’s, not aย master’s.

Main image: The Exxon Valdez. Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, publicย domain

picture-27344-1558471761.jpg
Justin Nobel writes on issues of science and the environment for Rolling Stone. His first book,ย PETROLEUM-238: Big Oilโ€™s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It, tells the story of a seven-year investigation into how the U.S. oil and gas industry has avoided environmental regulations and created a dangerous and radioactive public health crisis.

Related Posts

on

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.

Ahead of a city council vote, Resource Works launched an influence campaign with stock submissions for restaurant owners, hospitality workers, and residents.
on

The cache reveals a disturbingly โ€œcosyโ€ relationship between polluters and politicians, campaigners say.

The cache reveals a disturbingly โ€œcosyโ€ relationship between polluters and politicians, campaigners say.
on

Canadian environmentalist Tzeporah Berman makes the case for a "bold idea" to end the era of coal, oil and gas.

Canadian environmentalist Tzeporah Berman makes the case for a "bold idea" to end the era of coal, oil and gas.
Analysis
on

Premier Danielle Smith can expect new tariffs, fewer revenue streams, and a provincial deficit brought on by lowered oil prices.

Premier Danielle Smith can expect new tariffs, fewer revenue streams, and a provincial deficit brought on by lowered oil prices.