The New Wild West

by Blaire Briody

  At the same time, public opinion of foreign oil was at an extreme low. Evidence was mounting that oil was a major factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was nationalized and off limits to Western oil companies. But a few months before President George W. Bush made his “mission accomplished” speech in 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney, the former chief operating officer of Halliburton, organized a meeting with representatives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton, among others, to discuss opening Iraq’s oil industry to outsiders. A decade later, the industry was largely dominated by foreign firms. During a roundtable discussion in late 2007, General John Abizaid, the former commander for all U.S. forces in the Middle East, said: “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that.”

  After more than 3,500 U.S. soldiers lost their lives in Iraq and U.S. efforts to stabilize the area spiraled out of control, Americans were angry about the war, foreign oil, and U.S. dependence on the Middle East. But U.S. consumption of fossil fuels was as voracious as ever. In 2007, the United States consumed nearly 21 million barrels of oil a day, nearly three times the amount of any other country. With high demand and tightening supply, the price of oil climbed quickly. By May 2007, U.S. gasoline prices reached a record high of over $3 a gallon.

  A number of energy executives had turned to alternative energy sources such as natural gas. Advancements in fracking had opened up large natural gas reserves in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Utah, and Texas, and many experts touted natural gas as America’s energy future. But as a glut of natural gas on the market caused prices to fall, oil became the crown jewel. At over $90 a barrel at the end of 2007 and rising quickly, more wildcatters and energy executives lusted for black gold.

  Then in 2008, the secret was out. The USGS released a new survey updating its earlier estimate of 151 million barrels in the Bakken Formation, which lies under western North Dakota and extends into Montana and Canada, to a potential 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil—more than in any other formation in the lower 48 states. Those who had doubted North Dakota’s potential were shocked, and America finally started to pay attention to the state.

  In addition to North Dakota, fracking unlocked oil fields in Texas, California, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, and many other states, opening reserves beyond the wildest dreams of energy experts. In less than a decade, the United States cut its oil imports in half and became the world’s largest crude oil producer, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. Today, 9 out of 10 oil and gas wells in the United States use hydraulic fracturing, and more than 15 million Americans live within a mile of a well that has been fracked. China, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries—all with large shale formations—began studying the technology, looking for their own oil and gas bonanzas. Even as oil prices fell in 2015, Harold Hamm remained confident as ever: “For the next 50 years, we can expect to reap the benefits of the shale revolution. It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to America.”

  And western North Dakota lay in the center of it all.

  North Dakota’s Bakken region, about the size of Delaware, accounted for 40 percent of the growth in U.S. oil production. Some oil executives, like Hamm, believed that government estimates were too low, and there were closer to 900 billion barrels of oil buried deep in the state—more than in Saudi Arabia. Between 2007 and 2014, oil production skyrocketed 900 percent, and if you lined up the 8,500 wells that were drilled or fracked in the state, they’d stretch all the way around the earth. North Dakota became the number-two oil producing state in the nation, just behind Texas, and North Dakota alone produced more oil than OPEC member Ecuador. The pristine prairie transformed almost overnight into a maze of heavy industry and oil wells, with thousands of workers relocating to the state. The drilling was so frenzied and chaotic that David Petraeus, the former CIA director and U.S. Army general, referred to the region as a “war zone” during his visit in 2013.

  A major boom—harking back to California’s 1849 Gold Rush—was under way. But the fracking process itself was also falling under intense criticism. The word became infamous after the 2010 film Gasland showed residents from Pennsylvania to Wyoming lighting methane-contaminated tap water on fire due to nearby natural gas drilling. The public began to question the method as energy companies ramped up activity. What, they asked, was actually happening to the land as companies cashed in on their states?

  15. DONNY NELSON

  For farmers like Donny Nelson, the drilling activity began slowly. The surveyors came in with their tripods and maps to poke around on their land. Then the bulldozers came to clear away crops or vegetation. Then the trucks and crews arrived to install tanks and pipelines to prep the site for drilling. Usually once one company drilled a well or installed a pipeline, others came knocking. It was only later, after the drilling had already begun, that farmers realized just how disruptive the process was.

  For one, there was the flaring. Nearly every well had a gas flare—most rose at least 10 feet into the sky and burned off millions of cubic feet of toxic natural gas into the atmosphere every day. Although companies in other states produced and sold their natural gas, oil companies in North Dakota burned away about one-fifth to one-third of the natural gas they were extracting, or some $100 million of it every month, emitting about as much carbon dioxide a year as a million cars on the road.

  More than 60 types of pollutants have been identified downwind from flaring operations, including benzene, methane, propylene, and butane—many of which have been associated with cancer, birth defects, and organ damage. “We know that they’re giving off volatile compounds into the air,” said Nelson. “And if you don’t flare the gas, it’ll kill you.”

  Aerial images of North Dakota at night showed the entire state lit up from flares, as if the state were on fire. And in 2014, a researcher at the University of Michigan noticed a troubling increase in the global levels of ethane in the atmosphere, a natural gas that increases the ozone layer at the earth’s surface and causes dangerous levels of air pollution. He decided to look into the Bakken region as a possible source of the rise. Researchers measured that the small region was emitting 250,000 tons of ethane every year—or about 2 percent of total global ethane levels.

  There was another danger around the wells—the presence of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a highly toxic gas that can kill humans instantly in large doses. H2S is produced when organic matter breaks down. The gas is colorless, and in low levels, it smells like rotten eggs; in high doses, it paralyzes your sense of smell—essentially giving no warning that you’re minutes away from losing consciousness. One well by Nelson’s house vented off H2S gas every day. At first the company didn’t tell Nelson about it, and he was furious when he found out. Workers began texting him when it was happening so he knew to avoid the area and not move his cattle there. “The guys working told me, ‘Oh, we won’t do it if the wind is blowing in your direction.’ Well, what if the wind changes?” he asked me as we drove through his farm one day, knowing I couldn’t give him an answer.

  In a 1993 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, researchers found significantly higher levels of H2S at oil and gas wells in North Dakota than in other states. Levels at a few wells near Theodore Roosevelt National Park were 125 times higher than averages in oil-producing areas of Louisiana. More recently, multiple trains carrying oil from the North Dakota Bakken region have exploded, one of which killed 47 people. Explosions of traditional crude oil containers are extremely rare, and many hazardous materials experts speculated that H2S was to blame, given the force of the explosions and how difficult the fires were to extinguish. Pipeline company Enbridge Energy Partners threatened to shut down one of its North Dakota rail facilities because there was too much H2S in the crude oil being loaded there.

  There was also concern about water contamination. Nelson continued to drink the water that came out of his faucet, which was piped in from Lake Sakakawea. It was a prospect that might horrify anti-fracking activists. Back i
n 2005, when fracking for natural gas was growing rapidly, the Bush-Cheney administration passed a bill that exempted fracking operations from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Companies were not required to disclose the exact chemicals they used, as such disclosures could reveal trade secrets. Even the pioneer of fracking, George P. Mitchell himself, advocated for more regulation before he passed away in 2013. He wrote that there were “legitimate concerns” about the rapid expansion of fracking and its “impact on water, air and climate—concerns that industry has attempted to gloss over.”

  Brenda Jorgenson, who lived 50 miles north of Nelson, was cleaning jars one day when dirty water gushed out of her faucet. Crews had fracked an oil well on her land a few months before. She had no way of proving there was a connection, but the incident scared her—her well was her only source of drinking water. She saved a jar of the tainted water in her refrigerator and tried to get it tested, but most places she called were unaffordable (one company quoted her $1,500), didn’t know what to test the water for, or needed the sample sent to the lab within hours of the incident. Though the water from her faucet eventually cleared up, she now buys bottled water for her grandkids and pregnant daughter. She and her husband, however, continue to drink tap water.

  Lynn Helms, the director for the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, claimed in 2011 that the Health Department had received multiple complaints from landowners about health concerns, but he couldn’t disclose any of that information to the public. “I believe six or seven individuals have brought concerns about health effects to our attention,” he said that year. But it was “personal information which falls under HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996] regulations. Once an individual is alleging health problems as a result of oil and gas operations and once the Health Department responds and begins to work with them on blood tests and that sort of thing, that’s highly confidential information. I’m not sure it will ever be made public.”

  The EPA has documented cases of groundwater contamination from fracking since the early 1980s. A nationwide 2015 study found evidence that all stages of fracking can lead to water contamination, including when fracking fluids are injected into the well, and during procedures to store or dispose of wastewater. Groundwater can also be contaminated from surface spills or pipeline leaks—the study concluded that the most common cause of fracking fluid spills was from equipment failure, such as valves and blowout preventers. Researchers found that public drinking water systems for more than 8.6 million people in the United States were located within a mile of at least one fracked well.

  Contamination can also occur from leaks in the cement casing of a well, causing liquids or methane gas to rise up around the casing walls and migrate into underground water wells or aquifers. According to Cornell University professor Anthony Ingraffea, who has studied fracking’s effect on cement casings in Pennsylvania, shale gas wells were six times more likely to leak methane than conventional wells, and he estimated that 40 percent of wells in heavily drilled parts of northeast Pennsylvania would eventually leak. Pennsylvania receives hundreds of complaints every year from locals about water contamination, and nearly 300 cases of pollution had been confirmed by 2017. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection has issued numerous fines to local gas companies for methane migration. However, oil and gas industry leaders continue to assert that there is no evidence for groundwater contamination, and they fund studies to try to disprove the research. Few water wells are tested for methane or fracking chemicals before drilling begins, they argue, and without this data, there is no proof that the companies are responsible.

  The oil and gas industry has spent millions attacking Josh Fox and his film Gasland, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2011. When you search for “fracking” on Google, some of the first articles that come up are pro-fracking pieces and trailers for films that claim to debunk Gasland. The oil and gas industry bumps up these search results by paying for Google keywords. (BP admitted to using similar tactics during the Gulf oil spill to combat negative publicity.) The oil and gas industry has also attacked journalists at The New York Times and Rolling Stone who published critical reports on fracking.

  Of course, North Dakota has a different geological makeup from Pennsylvania. Oil companies and state researchers claim that North Dakota isn’t at the same risk for water contamination from fracking. A common argument I heard is that wells in North Dakota are drilled much deeper and thus, in theory, are less likely to affect water aquifers that sit 200 to 1,000 feet below the surface. However, even “shallow” wells in Pennsylvania are drilled at least 5,000 feet deep, way below aquifers. Another argument is that the levels of methane gas in the wells in North Dakota are lower. Since most companies in the Bakken are drilling for oil, there shouldn’t be the same problems as those that occur in the Marcellus Shale formation where gas is being drilled. While it’s true that the Marcellus formation holds much higher levels of natural gas (149 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas versus 12 trillion cubic feet in North Dakota’s Bakken), even low levels of leakage can contaminate aquifers.

  What few people realize is that new fracking technology has been happening for only a few years within North Dakota’s unique geologic structure, and there has been little research on the local environmental effects. “The more we experiment with underground drilling, the more we discover that ‘impermeable’ layers can be surprisingly permeable and fractures in the rock can be interlinked in unexpected ways,” wrote National Geographic journalist Edwin Dobb. Injecting fracking wastewater deep into the earth had even set off earthquakes in other parts of the country. Donny Nelson feared the environmental issues in North Dakota’s oil patch wouldn’t be much different from those in other states. “My biggest fear is water. We don’t know what they’re going to do to our water yet,” he said. “They’re drilling through every single one of our aquifers, and if you have any failure, man or machine, it’s going to contaminate that aquifer. They’ll sit and argue all they want that there’s so much rock between it that it’s never going to happen. But it’s going to happen—it has across the U.S. before, so why should we believe that it’s not going to here?”

  Nelson and other farmers wanted to limit the damage as much as possible. In 2006, Nelson and his neighbors fought with legislators to move wells farther away from homes—from 350 feet away to 500 feet away. The legislation passed, but 500 feet was still uncomfortably close—and oil storage tanks or generators could be even closer.

  Consider the case of Nelson’s neighbors, Frank and Wanda Leppell. I visited them on a rainy Monday afternoon at their modest one-story farmhouse. They lived at the end of a long dirt road, with two dogs and three cats and seven horses in the backyard. (“Don’t go in the bathroom,” Wanda told me when I came in the house. “The cat took a dump.”) Rusted farm equipment was scattered across their front yard. They poured me a cup of coffee, and we gazed out their front window from the dining room table at an oil well that sat a quarter mile from their house. Above the hypnotic bobbing of the oil wellhead, a vertical flame spewed into the sky. “It sounds like a blowtorch,” said Wanda. “When you go to bed tonight, put a blowtorch in your bedroom, crank it up, and see how well you sleep.”

  She said the flare was tiny compared to what it once was. “It looked like the field was on fire,” she said. The Leppells owned 30 acres and leased about 4,000 acres of cropland and pasture, but they didn’t own what was underground. Twice Wanda had woken up to the house filled with gas. She and Frank often felt vibrations from drilling and sometimes had to leave just to take a break from the smell. “There’s a chemical, something in the drilling mud that smells like rotten egg,” Wanda said. “I don’t know if it’s bad for your health.”

  The Leppells likely wouldn’t be getting a good night’s rest anytime soon. As we talked, another company was already clearing dirt to build a well 730 feet from their house. “I can’t imagine what that’s going to sound like,” said Wanda. The edge of the pad,
a large clearing for the wells, sat up against their chicken coop. The Leppells had been pushing state legislators to set wells at least 1,000 feet from homes, but so far they had had little success. “There is no reason they have to put these so close to people’s homes,” Frank told state senators at a hearing in early 2013 when farmers tried to pass a setback bill. A lobbyist from Petro-Hunt, an oil and gas extraction company headquartered in Texas, spoke in opposition to the bill, and it never passed. Theodora Bird Bear, a tribal member from Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, also spoke in support of the setback bill at the hearing: “I support my neighbors’ efforts to protect the health and public safety of western North Dakota residents,” she said. “Right now, well blow-outs, explosions, or fires from well sites can potentially occur 500 feet from the door of any resident. As legislators, do you support this?” The answer, it seemed, was yes.

  16. TOM STAKES

  In addition to sleeping on Atlanta’s streets, Tom Stakes was homeless another time before arriving in Williston. He once lived in a cave near Red River, New Mexico. At night temperatures could drop below zero, and he lived in constant fear of mountain lions and bears that roamed nearby. “Bears would come and piss all around the front of the cave. I’d throw rocks at ’em,” he said. So according to him, being homeless in North Dakota wasn’t so bad.

  But others might disagree. At the campground, some nights it would rain—piercing, sideways raindrops as big as gumballs that would smack into you as you were walking—and Stakes’s tent would fill up with so much water that all his bedding would be soaked. One storm brought 60-mile-per-hour winds and tornado warnings across the region. It knocked down trees and branches all over the campground. One camper’s tent was crushed by a tree, but luckily no one was sleeping in it at the time. That night, Stakes and his friend Web held onto the walls of their tent for two hours to keep the flimsy canvas from blowing away. Web had woken up first and shaken Stakes awake. “Tom! We’ll never make it!” he yelled over the howling wind.