14 DAY TRIAL // Recent reports indicate that, although financially-wise the oil companies in North Dakota do help boost local economy, the waste they produce is simply too much for the surrounding environment to handle, especially when company employees do not properly dispose of it.
Ever since the development of the induced hydraulic fracturing technology, back in the late 1940s, oil companies in area of North Dakota found themselves able to reach oil resources that up until then they were denied access to.
Thus, North Dakota ended up being second after Texas in terms of oil output.
Seeing how induced hydraulic fracturing basically consists in injecting highly-pressurized fracking fluids straight into the soil, so as to create new extraction channels, it comes only naturally that this particular technology would result in lots of waste water being produced.
As well as this, according to ecopolitology.org, more than 1,000 incidents involving oil, drilling wastewater or other fluids were reported by the oil companies here in 2011 alone. However, rumor has it that many more went “unnoticed.”
Interestingly enough, the president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, Ron Ness, argues that the oil industry already has its hands full with trying to minimize the damage done to the environment.
Thus, as far as he is concerned, “You're going to have spills when you have more activity. I would think North Dakotans would say the industry is doing a good job.”
Truth be told, they do have “more activity:” roughly 575,000 barrels of oil are extracted here on a daily basis.
Environmentalists argue that, unless oil companies come up with better ways to monitor their activities, North Dakota will soon be faced with having no aquatic life in its streams and wetland, and will no longer being able to grow crops, as the surrounding farmland will be sterilized.
This is due to the fact that the wastewater leaking into the ground displaces whatever mineral it finds there, thus inhibiting the development of plants or other organisms.
However, it seems that most of the reports filed by these green-heads have been expedited by the Obama administration, who appears to be more concerned with making it easier for oil companies to continue drilling in this part of the country.