{"id":48025,"date":"2019-08-27T09:03:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T14:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48025"},"modified":"2019-08-27T09:03:46","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T14:03:46","slug":"did-north-dakota-regulators-hide-an-oil-and-gas-industry-spill-larger-than-exxon-valdez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48025","title":{"rendered":"Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/08\/19\/north-dakota-regulators-oil-gas-spill-exxon-valdez\">Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/exxon-valdez_credit-noaa.jpeg?itok=Ue3Ejw6t\" alt=\"Exxon Valdez\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a><\/a><a><\/a><a><\/a><a href=\"mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20this%20story%20from%20DeSmogBlog&amp;body=https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/08\/19\/north-dakota-regulators-oil-gas-spill-exxon-valdez%0D%0A%0D%0ADid%20North%20Dakota%20Regulators%20Hide%20an%20Oil%20and%20Gas%20Industry%20Spill%20Larger%20Than%20Exxon%20Valdez?\"><\/a>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&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/EIR3825_Summary_Report%2C%20As%20of%20July%2023%2C%202019.pdf\">officially listed<\/a>&nbsp;as 10 gallons, the size of two bottled water delivery&nbsp;jugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But a whistle-blower has revealed to DeSmog the incident is actually on par with the 1989&nbsp;<em>Exxon Valdez<\/em>&nbsp;oil spill in Alaska, which released roughly 11 million gallons of thick&nbsp;crude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Garden Creek spill \u201cis in fact over 11 million gallons of condensate that leaked through a crack in a pipeline for over 3 years,\u201d 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&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/Garden%20Creek%20Spill%20Remediation%20Document%2C%20Verifies%20Spill%20at%2011%20Million%20Gallons.pdf\">a document<\/a>&nbsp;that details remediation efforts and verifies the spill\u2019s monstrous&nbsp;size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUp to 5,500,000 gallons\u201d of hydrocarbons have been removed from the site, the 2018 document states, \u201cbased upon an\u2026estimate of approximately 11 million gallons&nbsp;released.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Garden Creek is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company,&nbsp;ONEOK&nbsp;Partners, and processes natural gas and natural gas liquids, also called natural gas condensate, brought to the facility via pipeline from Bakken&nbsp;wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neither the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors coastal spills, nor the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could provide records to put the spill\u2019s 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 United&nbsp;States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did North Dakota Regulators Hide an Oil and Gas Industry Spill Larger Than Exxon Valdez? 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&nbsp;officially listed&nbsp;as 10 gallons, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5317,3862,26617,1395,1523],"class_list":["post-48025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-exxon-valdez","tag-justin-nobel","tag-north-dakota","tag-oil-spill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48026,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48025\/revisions\/48026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}