Posted on 05/23/2016 10:00:22 AM PDT by bananaman22
A site run by Denbury Onshore LLC in southwestern North Dakota has spilled more than 120,000 gallons of oil and wastewater into pastureland after a mechanical failure.
Some estimated 17,000 gallons of oil and 105,000 gallons of drilling wastewater containing saltwater and chemicals leaked into pastureland near the city of Marmarth when a tank sensor failed, news agencies quoted state regulators as saying.
The tank overflowed on Wednesday, and by Friday, workers were excavating the affected pastureland, which is being equated to the size of a football field.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Global warming, clearly. The warm temperature compromised the seals. /sarc.
The punishment will be severe and swift. But when the EPA does it (and they did), only...silence.
I am going to watch this one like a hawk. Let’s see how much it costs this Company and how severe the fine is.
If you divide 120,000 by 55 you get 2,182 barrels, which doesn’t sound near as bad. I’m surprised that the media didn’t go with litters, quarts or pints to get an even bigger scarier number.
Not to worry, we have a Democrat president, so all everywhere is well — because America elected and reelected a god.
/s
Roughly 88% of which is fracking water, not oil. Set up a feedlot for a few months and by this time next year, the only evidence anything ever happened will be greener grass.
For the record, the nearest city of Marmarth has a population of less than 150 and is the largest town in the county. The county seat of Amidon is home to 20 people, second smallest county seat in the USA.
These guys just need to erect a windmill and throw about 500 dead bald eagles onto the land. The EPA will give them a pass then.
So, go in there and clean it up. Accidents happen.
Se can put a Man on the Moon but we can’t clean up an Industrial Accident?
Naah, they are too busy giving some guy a hard time about a stock pond somewhere in the Midwest.
Or messing with my uncle about a pile of tires some criminal dumped on his property.
Some estimated 17,000 gallons of oil and 105,000 gallons of drilling wastewater containing saltwater and chemicals leaked into pastureland near the city of Marmarth when a tank sensor failed, news agencies quoted state regulators as saying. The tank overflowed on Wednesday, and by Friday, workers were excavating the affected pastureland, which is being equated to the size of a football field.Compared to the EPA's Gold King Mine fiasco / sabotage, how does this compare? Rhetorically speaking, I mean.
Oil field lingo is 42 gallons per barrel, not 55. Number of barrels is 2,857 which is considerable. If it was just in a pasture, cleanup should be fairly easy unless there are groundwater impacts. Clean up the surface area and pay the farmer for damages.
Twenty years ago one of my early clients did not have sensors on a 40,000 barrel tank receiving jet fuel from a pipeline. The terminal manager made an incorrect calculation on how long it would take to fill the tank and went home. He was called back when the neighbors complained about the petroleum odor to find he had flooded the unlined containment area surrounding the tank with jet fuel. The facility was right next to an irrigation ditch and all the residences were on private wells. I spent a couple of months in charge of the clean up and sampling all local wells which fortunately, were in a deeper water bearing zone.
Now the company has installed high level and high-high level alarms on its tanks to avoid just this type of problem. Though a supporter or the industry, it never ceases to amaze me how some simple cost-effect precautions can prevent an incident that will cost many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to mitigate. In addition, it feeds the environutters playbook of how the big bad oil companies are polluting the environment.
Happens In Manufacturing Industry too.
Companies will cobble something to circumvent a safety switch in Big presses to save replacing a faulty one at 50 dollars but whine when someone loses an arm or gets their whole body turned to liquid and have to pay hundreds of thousands in fines and civil litigation.
Mmmmm-yummmmm! Puts hair on the cattle’s chests!
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