Abby Zimet
Days after a report of “substantial gaps in oversight” at thousands of high-risk fracking wells – ie: 2,100 of 3,702 wells suspected of contamination have gone uninspected, including hundreds in ND – emergency officials announced a leak at Tioga, North Dakota’s Ron Burgundy 3-23-14H fracking well, which is under a confidentiality agreement that protects its owners from having to release vital information to the public like what the hell is going on there.
Alarmingly, 22% of oil booming North Dakota’s 1,813 oil and gas wells are now on its “Confidential Well” list, probably because the state automatically awards such “tight hole” status to any operator who asks without having to offer any justication other than, in the words of one, “because we can.”
The well, near the site of a massive spill a few years ago, is one of three Ron Burgundy wells owned by Denver-based Emerald Oil, which is reportedly bringing spilled liquids to “disposal sites.” It’s hard to decide what’s most scary here: That oil companies are giving cute names to their deadly wells, that they don’t have to tell us what goes on there until months after the fact, or the straight-faced way they announce they’ve called in a Halliburton spill company named Boots and Coots (really) to clean it up.
Via Common Dreams