Firm with History of Spill Cover-Ups Hired to Clean Up North Dakota Oil Spill

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/28



Firm with History of Spill Cover-Ups Hired to Clean Up North Dakota Oil Spill
by Steve Horn
Published on Thursday, November 28, 2013 by DeSmogBlog.com

Tesoro Logistics — the company whose pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons of fracked Bakken Shale oil in rural North Dakota in September — has hired infamous contractor Witt O'Brien's to oversee its clean-up of the biggest fracked oil spill in U.S. history.

The oil was obtained via hydraulic fracturing ("fracking&quot in the Bakken Shale basin.

As revealed after ExxonMobil hired the same firm in the aftermath of a 210,000-gallon tar sands oil spill in April 2013, Witt O'Brien's — formerly known as OOPS, Inc. — is a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups dating back to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It also oversaw the spraying of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico during BP's summer 2010 mega-spill and a literal cover-up of Enbridge's massive "dilbit disaster" tar sands pipeline spill in Michigan.

Witt O'Brien's also won a $300,000 contract to develop an emergency response plan for TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline in August 2008.

[gtar100]

1. They never learn.

The oil industry will be the death of us all if we do not break free from their stranglehold on our energy needs.

If we had a shred of sanity, every last penny of profit in oil and gas production would go towards cleaning up the messes it makes in our environment and the development, production, and promotion of safe, clean alternatives.