On September 29th, in the northwest corner of North Dakota, farmer Steve Jensen was making his rounds harvesting wheat like he had done so many times before. This time, however, he would come across a massive leak in an oil pipeline that runs, underground, from Tioga to the Canadian border. Crude oil was bubbling out of the ground, and no one was there to stop it.
The oil spill Jensen found has turned out to be one of the largest oil spills in North Dakota history, and almost four times larger than Arkansas’s Mayflower disaster. Over twenty thousand gallons of oil was spilled from this North Dakota section of pipeline, a fact that even the Mayor wasn’t made privy to until five days after the discovery. And until now, the public has very little clue that this disaster was unfolding in this small town in North Dakota.
Tesero Oil owns this stretch of pipeline, and quite arrogantly stated when asked about the effects of the spill:
??no water sources were contaminated, no wildlife was hurt, and no human were injured.?
Looking back at the Mayflower Oil Spill, one thing that we can surely point out is that even six months later, side effects of an oil spill drastically affect the ecological status of an effected area.
Tesero plans on continuing cleanup efforts in the area, and estimates this cleanup effort will cost nearly $4 million dollars.
As for the land, Jensen is at a loss, this land will not be useful for any type of farming for many years to come and who knows what the long lasting effects of this oil spill will do to North Dakota’s rushing farmlands.
These types of incidents are direct reflections of why protestors are looking for an extreme raise in regulatory laws for oil companies. These types of incidents are direct reflections of why groups are fighting so hard to keep Keystone XL out of our country. With a pipeline so big, a spill could destroy thousands of miles, take many ecological lives, and threaten the safety of all American citizens.
Edited/Published by: SB
