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" Steve Jensen&amp;#039;s land is dead now. His farm in North Dakota is a dead zone because an oil pipeline run by a company called Tesoro ruptured somehow and blessed Jensen&amp;#039;s land with 26,000 barrels of crude that has bubbled to the surface, and now, from the air, Jensen&amp;#039;s farm looks like the Talladega Speedway. Because it is a pipeline, and pipelines burst, this one burst. And because it is an oil company, and oil companies lie, especially about their pipelines, which burst, Tesoro immediately broke the glass on the bullshit-alibi alarm that hangs on the wall of its company cafeteria. Tesoro said in a statement to The Associated Press that it based its calculations on &amp;quot;data collected during our field investigation work. This investigation included a thorough examination of the site spill characteristics including factors such as surface area and depth of soil impacted, and soil porosity.&amp;quot; The company would not elaborate. The company said its &amp;quot;site investigation was developed based on well-established and recognized American Petroleum Institute, Geologic Society of America and American Institute of Professional Geologists standards.&amp;quot; Jack Hess, executive director of the Geologic Society of America, and Bill Siok, executive director of the American Institute of Professional Geologists, said their groups have no such standards. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve never issued any guidelines over oil spills,&amp;quot; Hess said. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not the kind of business we are in and something we wouldn&amp;#039;t get into.&amp;quot; Siok said: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m stumped. I kind of suspect they made an incorrect reference.&amp;quot; Mr. Siok is a very nice man. Because it is run by greedy fools, North Dakota is a state that has sold its soul to the oil companies, which lie, especially about their pipelines, which burst, and it also appears that North Dakota, and the greedy fools who run it, may have set a land-speed rcord for ass-covering. Officials at the North Dakota Department of Health say that at first, they didn&amp;#039;t realize the spill&amp;#039;s size, according to a report filed for our Newscast unit by NPR&amp;#039;s Sam Sanders. With more than 20,000 barrels of crude covering more than seven acres of land, the spill is one of the largest in the state&amp;#039;s history. It&amp;#039;s far larger than the leak that occurred in Arkansas earlier in 2013. The leak has been stopped, officials say. The incident is giving ammunition to critics who fault the way North Dakota has dealt with the oil boom the state has benefited from for several years now. Theodora Bird Bear of the Dakota Resource Council tells Sam Sanders that the Health Department&amp;#039;s actions are part of a larger pattern.&amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a lot of revenue coming in from oil and gas development out here,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But there&amp;#039;s also a lot of costs that are unmeasured and never really acknowledged. North Dakota can do better.&amp;quot; Ms. Bird Bear is a very nice person, too. Frankly, I have no reason to believe &amp;quot;officials&amp;quot; when they say the leak has been stopped. I don&amp;#039;t have any reason to believe that this gunk hasn&amp;#039;t gotten into the groundwater until somebody from outside North Dakota, which pretty plainly is terrified of pissing off the extraction industries that now run the state, tells me that&amp;#039;s the case. (&amp;quot;A thick band of clay&amp;quot;? OK, trust but verify.) Frankly, given what we know about pipelines, and the people who build them, and the people who operate them, and how they are the property of an entire industry that poisons the land and then lies about, the fact that we even deliberating building our old pal, the Keystone XL pipeline, is completely mad. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25244/north-dakota-pipeline-oil-spill-101613/>