The latest environmental disaster in the United States has taken place in North Dakota. On September 29th, a wheat farmer near Tioga discovered the spill while harvesting his crops. The spill was traced to a nearby pipeline owned and operated by Tesoro Corp., an oil company based out of San Antonio, TX. The 20-year-old pipeline had a quarter-inch size hole in it. It has been reported that over 20,600 barrels -– or 865,200 gallons –- of oil were spilled. The spill is spread across 7.3 acres, nearly seven football fields.
State environmental geologist Kris Roberts claims that the spill is fully contained and that none of the spilt oil has contaminated any underground or surface water. Of the more than 20,000 barrels, only 1,285 have been recovered. Roberts also noted that there is a 40-foot thick layer of natural clay underneath of the spill site that is prohibiting the oil from contaminating underground water.
Tesoro has issued a statement for the spill and claim full responsibility. They have estimated that the spill will cost them $4 million to clean up. While they are investigating the cause of the hole in the pipeline, Tesoro claims, “There have been no injuries or known impacts to water, wildlife or the surrounding environment as a result of this incident.” CEO Greg Goff stated, “Protection and care of the environment are fundamental to our core values, and we deeply regret any impact to the landowner…we will continue to work tirelessly to fully remediate the release area.”
This spill is almost three or four times the size of the April 2013 Pegasus pipeline (owned by ExxonMobil) leak that spilled 5,000 - 7,000 barrels of tar sands oil into a residential Arkansas neighborhood.
img alt="" class="media-image" height="550" style="float: right; width: 480px; height: 318px; " width="830" src="http://maryland.sierraclub.org/sites/maryland.sierraclub.org/files/styles/large/public/arkansas-oil-spill-slideshow-1.jpg?itok=cVDNd73W" />
In July 2010, an Enbridge Energy pipeline ruptured in Michigan spilling anywhere from 877,000-1,000,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (tar sands oil) into the Talmadge Creek, eventually flowing into the Kalamazoo River. The spill resulted in oil impacting over 25 miles of shoreline. Unfortunately, thousands of gallons of oil sank in the water column and were not removed. In March 2013, the EPA ordered Enbridge to return to the river to continue the cleanup process. To date, it is the largest on-land oil spill in U.S. history.
These spills have become a common occurrence. These are only three of a number of oil spills that have occurred within the last few years. It must be noted that Tesoro’s statement that there has been “no known impacts to…the surrounding environment” is simply not true. There are still over 860,000 gallons of oil in a farmer’s wheat field, and there is reason to believe that this oil is beginning to seep into the soil. That alone should be enough to discredit Tesoro’s statement. In addition, in the early stages of the cleanup process, workers were burning crude oil on the surface, releasing high amounts of toxic pollutants into the local air and atmosphere.
If anything, the increasing incidences of pipeline oil spills should make everyone even more skeptical of the Keystone XL pipeline. There is simply no way to ensure an oil pipeline’s safety. The ecological and long-term effects of the North Dakota spill have yet to be seen, but in Kalamazoo and Arkansas, they are unfortunately very apparent.