Tesoro oil spill: over 20,000 barrels seep into North Dakota wheat field

[SomeGuyInEagan]

Source: The Guardian

More than 20,000 barrels of crude oil have spewed out of a Tesoro oil pipeline in a wheat field in northwestern North Dakota, the state health department said Thursday.

State environmental geologist Kris Roberts said the 20,600-barrel spill, among the largest recorded in the state, was discovered on 29 September by a farmer harvesting wheat about nine miles south of Tioga.

"The farmer was harvesting his wheat and started smelling oil," Roberts said. "It went from there."

The spill has been contained and no water sources have been contaminated, Roberts said. Cleanup crews have recovered about 1,285 barrels of oil, officials said. A barrel is 42 gallons.


Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/10/north-dakota-tioga-tesoro-oil-spill

[zeemike]

1. And that land will never grow wheat again

At least in our lifetime.

[freshwest]

2. Mike Ditka needs to go and say how great that is, too...

[Auntie Bush]

3. Isn't that the area the XL Pipeline is going through?

This spill will give them a little taste of what it would be like if we had an XL spill.
Maybe it will change some minds. I hope one of them is Obama's.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. Seep in the headline...

spew it the body. These words are not synonyms.

[RC]

5. It spewed out of the pipeline and seeped into the ground.

Two different actions. One is spray, as from the hole in the pipe. The other is soaked, as in saturated the ground.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Sounds plausible...

but I think they used "seeped" in the headline to make it look like a minor accident.

[RC]

15. Didn't think of that. Could be.

[alp227]

8. The original AP title: "ND pipeline breaks, spews 20,600 barrels of oil"

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/nd-pipeline-breaks-spews-20600-barrels-oil

Don't know how the Guardian editors re title the story to have opposite words. They're opposites in British English, too.

[Iliyah]

7. Well who the hell let that happen?

[alp227]

9. K&R and more links

Original, more accurate AP title: ND pipeline breaks, spews 20,600 barrels of oil

Most North Dakota news sites reprinted the AP story, but the Fargo Forum (also redistributed to other Forum sites like the Duluth News Tribune) has an article: ND pipeline spills 20,600 barrels of oil on farmer's land northeast of Tioga

Other outlets with reports: Wall Street Journal; Reuters

[jwirr]

10. Between this and the snowstorm in the Dakotas we are going to be paying more for bread and

beef.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Hopefully, this is near Leith ND (aka Whitesonlyville ND)

[DeSwiss]

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- K&R

[hatrack]

13. 865,000 gallons of oil here, 865,000 gallons of oil there .. . .

Pretty soon you're talking real contamination.

[drynberg]

14. Just the cost of doing business and making money...

And this is why business as usual ain't gettin' it anymore...we need clean fuels that are renewable, how could this be made more clear?

[AverageJoe90]

16. Forget about 6*C temperature rises.....THIS is what we should be worried about in the here and now.

6-7*C of temperature rise would definitely be liable to do a lot of long-term damage to crops over the next 100-150 years or so.....but you know what? These oil spills are even worse than that. They can happen with little to no warning and can ruin cropland in a mere instant, whereas similar affects from AGW might take 150-200 years(and at least we can find ways to mitigate the damage ahead of time). Obviously, neither is good, but this may actually be one of the biggest short-term threats to U.S. farmland.....and this could only be the beginning of things to come, too, if Big Fossil isn't reigned in soon.