Fin Dooley
- State Government Officials Fail to Manage Oilfield Brine Spills
- Unpaid Royalties and Damaged Lands: Answering Questions
- Other side of the boom: Landowners say state bowing to oil. As state officials met in Bismarck to approve new oil conditioning standards and to discuss the drop in crude oil prices, landowners from the Oil Patch gathered at a separate meeting to review a different side of the Bakken oil boom — spills, soil contamination and landowner rights.
- Call for special legislative investigation, audit of ND officials. North Dakotans say New York Times is accurate about state’s failures
- Where Oil and Politics Mix. After an unusual land deal, a giant spill and a tanker-train explosion, anxiety began to ripple across the North Dakota prairie.
- The Downside of the Boom. North Dakota took on the oversight of a multibillion-dollar oil industry with a regulatory system built on trust, warnings and second chances.
- The following press release and subsequent tour changed the public discussion of spills in the oil patch. The public's perception of oil field disasters is focused upon black tars snuffing the life out of penguins and sea otters. That's true, oil does that. However, penguins and otters can be rehabilitated. Oil is metabolized by biological processes. It takes time but it does occur. Salt on the other hand is not metabolized. It must be removed or diluted. As a result of our October 2013 tour North Dakota officials began to tell what they knew. Salt contamination is the more serious problem. It will cost billions to repair North Dakota's farmland. That's the bad news. The good news is that lots of new scientist will develop skills that are marketable throughout the world. The oil industry has done the same in the Amazon as it is doing in North Dakota. It has dumped oil field wastes, chemicals, and brines into watersheds.
-
Seeking answers in the oil field. This newspaper article in the Minot Daily News 10/29/2013 gives an account of the tour that changed the public perception. The writer Kim Fundinsdland is one of the writers who has consistently studied and reported on Bottineau County, ground zero of North Dakota's salted lands.