Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller's formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and reviving moribund local businesses.

But Keller, a natural resource manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen a more ominous effect of the boom, too: Oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto the region's land and into its waterways with increasing regularity.

Hydraulic fracturing — the controversial process behind the spread of natural gas drilling — is enabling oil companies to reach previously inaccessible reserves in North Dakota, triggering a turnaround not only in the state's fortunes, but also in domestic energy production. North Dakota now ranks second behind only Texas in oil output nationwide.

The downside is waste — lots of it. Companies produce millions of gallons of salty, chemical-infused wastewater, known as brine, as part of drilling and fracking each well. Drillers are supposed to inject this material thousands of feet underground into disposal wells, but some of it isn't making it that far.

According to data obtained by ProPublica, oil companies in North Dakota reported more than 1,000 accidental releases of oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids in 2011, about as many as in the previous two years combined. Many more illicit releases went unreported, state regulators acknowledge, when companies dumped truckloads of toxic fluid along the road or drained waste pits illegally.

State officials say most of the releases are small. But in several cases, spills turned out to be far larger than initially thought, totaling millions of gallons. Releases of brine, which is often laced with carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals, have wiped out aquatic life in streams and wetlands and sterilized farmland. The effects on land can last for years, or even decades.

Compounding such problems, state regulators have often been unable — or unwilling — to compel energy companies to clean up their mess, our reporting showed.

Under North Dakota regulations, the agencies that oversee drilling and water safety can sanction companies that dump or spill waste, but they seldom do: They have issued fewer than 50 disciplinary actions for all types of drilling violations, including spills, over the past three years.
Keller has filed several complaints with the state during this time span after observing trucks dumping wastewater and spotting evidence of a spill in a field near his home. He was rebuffed or ignored every time, he said.

"There's no enforcement," said Keller, 50, an avid outdoorsman who has spent his career managing Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir created by damming the Missouri River. "None."

The 11,119 foot long 6-inch pipeline segment #7296 at Taylor Energy's Mississippi Canyon 20 Platform A at was partially buried by the same mud flow as destroyed the platform. As of March 2005, Taylor Energy was able to verify that the pipeline is still holding. It is estimated that there is a maximum of 1,720 barrels dehydrated crude oil in the buried segments (which is the worst case spill estimate) which could be released as a result of the mudslide and/or during the recovery of the pipeline. A revised, more accurate (and possibly greatly reduced) estimate of oil released will not be available until the pipeline is fully decommissioned. As of July 2007, Taylor Energy has had to continue to postpone further efforts to evacuate the pipeline until excavations to locate and secure the wells associated with the lost platform have been completed.

The Waterkeeper Alliance and several Gulf Coast Waterkeeper organizations filed suit Thursday against Taylor Energy Co. for failing to halt the flow of oil from wells off Louisiana's coastline that were severed by an underwater landslide during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

The organizations filed suit under provisions of the federal Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act that allows citizens to go to court to enforce federal laws. In an October notice to the company and federal agencies that the groups intendedd to sue, they said between 100 gallons and 400 gallons of oil a day were being released by the wells.

Taylor Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

A Taylor offshore platform and 28 wells located 11 miles of the state's coast were damaged during Ivan, and oil has repeatedly bubbled to the surface in the area since then. The suit charges that the company and federal agencies have hidden from the public the amount of oil released during the past 7 years, citing privacy concerns, and has failed to contain the leaks.

"The plaintiffs filed suit to stop the spill and lift the veil of secrecy surrounding Taylor Oil's seven-year long response and recovery operation," Waterkeeper Alliance executive director Marc Yaggi said in a statement announcing the suit. "Neither the government nor Taylor will answer basic questions related to the spill response, citing privacy concerns."

The Waterkeeper groups were assisted in gathering information about the oil leaks by remote sensing and mapping volunteers with SkyTruth, based in West Virginia, and pilots with SouthWings, based in North Carolina, who have conducted aerial surveillance off Louisiana's shoreline since the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in 2010.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in New Orleans by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic on behalf of the alliance and Atchafalaya Basinkeeper of Baton Rouge, Galveston Baykeeper, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper of Baton Rouge, Louisiana Bayoukeeper of Barataria and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.

“The Taylor Oil spill is emblematic of a broken system, where oil production is prioritized over concerns for human health and the environment,” said Justin Bloom, Eastern Regional Director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Nearly two years after the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill, none of the comprehensive reforms recommended by the National Oil Spill Commission have been enacted and Congress has yet to pass a single law to better protect workers, the environment or coastal communities.”

Reports of either an oil sheen or visible oil at the Taylor offshore site have been filed repeatedly with the U.S. Coast Guard's National Response Center since the initial accident, including every day since Jan. 14 this year.

A Monday report said 2.45 gallons of oil spotted that day were estimated to have caused a 500-foot-wide by 1.3-mile-long sheen at the site.
Waves created by Ivan, at least one of which was estimated to be 100 feet high, caused an underwater mudslide at Taylor's Mississippi Canyon Block 20 site, knocking the platform 700 yards away and covering the 450-foot-deep wellheads with 100 feet of sediment.