A farming harvesting his fields in North Dakota has come across a massive oil spill, undetected long enough to become the size of seven football fields.
Local media reports cite farmer Steve Jensen as saying the crude appeared to becoming from a rupture in an underground pipeline operated by Tesoro Corp.
The farmer noted that he had smelled the crude for days but it wasn't until he began harvesting his wheat fields that he discovered the source of the smell, as his combine got caught up in crude spewing up to six inches above the ground.
The spill, discovered on 29 September and since contained, is one of the largest ever in the history of North Dakota. A total of 20,600 barrels of crude was leaked into the field, spreading over 7.3 acres. To put this into perspective, this leak is four times larger than a leak in Arkansas in late March that prompted the evacuation of 20 residences.
It took state authorities 12 days to report the spill after the farmer alerted them.
According to Tesoro Corp., no water sources were contaminated during the spill, but the fact that it went undetected long enough to spread so far, coupled with the 12-day reporting delay by officials, has raised more questions about leak detection policies.
"There are many questions to be answered on how it occurred and how it was detected and if there was anything that could have been done that could have made a difference," state Governor Jack Dalrymple told reporters.
"Initially, it was felt that the spill was not overly large," Dalrymple said. "When they realized it was a fairly sizable spill, they began to contact more people about it."
