No One's Really Monitoring the Pipeline in Your Back Yard

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/no-ones-really-monitoring-the-pipeline-in-your-back-yard/280962/



Last Friday the Associated Press reported that approximately 300 oil pipeline spills have occurred in North Dakota since January 2012 – and that none of those spills were reported to North Dakota residents and landowners. This sort of news raises the question of who, if anyone, is paying attention to the integrity and efficacy of America’s pipelines.

The most recent publicly known spill in North Dakota was discovered by a wheat farmer in Tioga, near the northwestern corner of the state, on September 29. Over 865,000 gallons of oil, enough to ooze over seven acres of land, had leaked from a Tesoro Logistics pipeline. Tesoro didn’t know about the leak until the farmer, Steven Jensen, called another oil company with a pipeline in the Tioga area to report that oil was gurgling up from the ground on his property. After being relayed to Tesoro the same day, notice of the problem got to the North Dakota Department of Health, whose officials did not alert the public of the accident until several days later, according to the New York Times. According to the AP, “officials kept it quiet for 11 days - and only said something after the AP asked about it.”

It was after asking about the Tesoro spill, which officials say was swiftly contained and posed no threat to humans or wildlife, that the AP discovered the hundreds of other spills that have escaped public notice over the past two years. The state of North Dakota is not legally obliged to report oil spills to the public, but regulators are currently reviewing their policies and “thresholds” for reporting these incidents in the future. Lynn Helms, director of the state’s mineral resources department, said regulators worry about “over-reporting” spills, and want to keep the public informed “but not overwhelmed by little incidents.”

Notifying the public about spills is one thing, but what about detecting leaks in the first place? Surely there’s a better alert method than waiting for a landowner to step in a puddle of oil.