Internal Documents Reveal Coverup in North Dakota Oil Spill

http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/24/documents-reveal-coverup-north-dakota-oil-spill/

Greenpeace |October 24, 2013 10:10 am


By Jesse Coleman

North Dakota, long known for its cattle ranches and open spaces, has recently become one of the oil and gas industry’s most prized—and profitable—possessions, thanks to the advent of fracking. However, the price of oil and gas industry development is paid in destruction to the environment and strains to the regulatory framework meant to protect the public from a reckless industry, as Tesoro’s massive oil spill attests.

Documents from an open records request by Greenpeace have uncovered that Tesoro, a fracking giant based in San Antonio:

Possibly Knew Their Pipeline was Dangerously Weak

Tesoro ran tests on the pipeline that ruptured more than two weeks before the spill was discovered.

A robot, known as a “smart pig,” detected weaknesses in the pipeline on Sept.10 and 11. Tesoro claims that they did not have ample time to digest the data before the spill, but Tesoro employees on the ground tell a different story. Furthermore, once the pipeline spill was discovered, Tesoro dispatched crews to check two other sites on the pipeline for leaks, indicating they were aware of potential fail points in the pipeline.

Did Not Report the Spill Correctly or Promptly

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