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Speaker 1

00:04

Now, North Dakota, or as you may know it, South Da Canada. You probably don't think about North Dakota very much, and believe me, they know that. In fact, 1 of their visitor centers even assumes that they are going to be the last state you'll visit.

Speaker 2

00:19

North Dakota is probably best known for the 1996 Coen Brothers movie Fargo, and the visitor center can tell you all about it, with pictures and the film's famous wood chipper on display.

Speaker 1

00:28

-♪♪

Speaker 2

00:30

Visitors who save the state for their 50th get a Best for Last T-shirt and a certificate.

Speaker 1

00:35

Okay, okay. Just a couple of things there. First, you do know what that wood chipper was used for, right?

Speaker 1

00:42

That was used to grind up Steve Buscemi. And secondly, best for last is a heartbreaking slogan. You're just 1 step away from having it be, North Dakota, look, we know. But the fact North Dakota is so upbeat about its own lack of popularity is quintessentially Midwestern.

Speaker 1

01:02

People from North Dakota are so kind and so wholesome, a few years back, they actually had billboards by the roadside reading, -"Be kind and be polite." -$25,000. And that says something wonderful about them, just as it says something awful about me as a citizen of New York City that my first reaction to seeing a billboard reading, -"Be polite," is, -"Fuck you! Don't tell me what to do! Go fuck yourself!

Speaker 1

01:26

Be polite! Be polite! Fuck you! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be polite.

Speaker 1

01:31

Be polite. Be polite. Be polite. Be polite.

Speaker 1

01:34

The point is, North Dakota had gotten used to being ignored, but a few years ago, this happened.

Speaker 3

01:41

North Dakota, with the big shale oil boom. North Dakota's oil

Speaker 4

01:44

production climbed to 810,000 barrels a day.

Speaker 5

01:47

This is the California gold rush, but in North Dakota in the 21st century.

Speaker 1

01:52

Yes, like Channing Tatum, North Dakota suddenly turned out to be a lot more interesting once it was covered in oil. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ So, Over the last decade, the state's Backen Shell formation has produced an oil boom so large, it's helped cut the amount of oil we import in half. Now think about that.

Speaker 1

02:08

North Dakota has done almost as much to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as you did when you biked to work that 1 time. And at its peak, this oil boom produced thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in wealth. It was such a dramatic shift. ABC has a new drama set in the back end.

Speaker 6

02:27

In the world of oil, 1 name reigns supreme. Here, you're either with Briggs or you're out. You think I'm just gonna toss you the keys to the kingdom and watch you drive it over the cliff?

Speaker 6

02:39

Sometimes, you have to play dirty to get filthy rich. Blood & oil, Sundays this fall. Yes! On Sunday!

Speaker 1

02:53

In the ultimate miracle, the oil boom brought Don Johnson back. And a Don Johnson television show is as rare as a solar eclipse. And like a solar eclipse, you really shouldn't look directly at it.

Speaker 1

03:06

But, but Don Johnson is not the only reason that this show is a little outdated. The price of oil has dropped in the last year, and companies have slowed down expansion of new wells. But when the price rises again, the boom is expected to return. So maybe let's use this pause to take stock of what the hell just happened to North Dakota.

Speaker 1

03:26

Because for all the good the oil industry has done for the state, it has not been without cost. For a start, it's taken a massive toll on their environment. Last year, the New York Times found that since 2006, 18 million gallons of oils and chemicals had spilled, leaked, or misted into the air. That is a quantity of lubricants and toxins seldom found outside of a John Mayer pool party.

Speaker 1

03:49

And equally difficult to clean. And that's saying something. And spills of oil and salt water can have disastrous consequences. Just listen to a couple of farmers who've had their land impacted by this.

Speaker 7

04:01

When things go bad, and when salt water happens, you can't see it initially. So years down the road, it shows up, and it's devastating.

Speaker 5

04:09

Something should have been a lot...

Speaker 8

04:11

Done a lot quicker. Darwin Peterson farms the land around here and says this land now is out of production as long as he can foresee.

Speaker 5

04:18

It's pretty well, you know, just annihilated.

Speaker 1

04:20

Look, there are times when it's acceptable to destroy farmland, like when you're a child from Krypton looking for a place to crash land. Or you're a bunch of racist baseball ghosts looking for a place to play. But this is not 1 of those times.

Speaker 1

04:36

But the danger to land is only just the beginning, as a reporter for Reveal found when she investigated worker deaths in the entire Bakken region.

Speaker 9

04:45

Since 2006, at least 74 workers have died in the Bakken oil fields. That means that, on average, someone dies every 6 weeks in the Bakken oil fields.

Speaker 1

04:55

A death every 6 weeks is what you do to keep your soap opera on the air in real life. That is fucking horrifying. Now, you might hope employers would do everything in their power to minimize those risks, but that does not always seem to be the case.

Speaker 1

05:10

Just listen to this 1 worker, whose job involves lowering explosives into the earth and detonating them. Describe his schedule.

Speaker 10

05:18

I work a 20 and 10, 20 days on, 10 days off. The longest I've ever been out on a job site is 69 hours straight. Sixty-nine hours.

Speaker 10

05:28

Straight.

Speaker 11

05:29

Yep.

Speaker 12

05:29

So That sounds like it could be dangerous.

Speaker 10

05:33

Yeah, definitely. It's a ticking time bomb, really.

Speaker 1

05:37

He worked 69 hours straight handling explosives. You shouldn't be allowed to work that long handling frozen yogurt. That is not what I ordered, Ricky.

Speaker 1

05:48

That's a handful of sprinkles with your watch in it. Go home and rest! I want to speak to a manager! But the problem is, there are few incentives for companies to actively care about this.

Speaker 1

06:01

We do have federal regulators like OSHA, but unfortunately, not only have they themselves conceded that their general regulations used for oil and gas are inadequate, but the odds of them ever turning up to inspect a work site in North Dakota are pretty slim.

Speaker 12

06:15

OSHA only has 9 full-time compliance officers for North Dakota. And according to some estimates, it would take decades for OSHA to inspect every workplace in the state.

Speaker 1

06:26

Only 9 compliance officers. That is terrible. And it's actually even worse, because that clip is out of date, and they currently only have 8.

Speaker 1

06:36

And incidentally, those 8 have to cover both North and South Dakota. And look, there are plenty of things that having 8 of would be fine in the Dakotas. Water parks? Sure, 8 is plenty.

Speaker 1

06:48

Restaurants that serve lutefisk? 8 is 7 more than enough. -♪ ♪ -♪ But when you're talking about safety inspectors for oil wells, you can at least want to be in double digits. And given all of this, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising when tragedy strikes, as it did 4 years ago at a well owned by a company called Oasis Petroleum.

Speaker 4

07:08

Some tragic news from western North Dakota. 1 man is killed and 3 are injured in an oil well explosion. A Wisconsin man died at the scene.

Speaker 4

07:17

3 other men were transported to the Wilston Hospital to be treated for severe burns.

Speaker 1

07:22

Now, that is the sort of local news story that you watch, feel briefly sad about, and then forget as soon as they get to their final story about a squirrel who can play ping pong. But remember, that was a fatal accident, and 1 of the workers who died was a 21-year-old named Brendan Wegner. And for those who worked alongside him, their lives were never the same.

Speaker 9

07:42

Jebediah Stanfill was working on a nearby rig and rushed over.

Speaker 11

07:46

And I go out there and I ask him where everybody's at. And I'm here there, and he just says, Derek Man's dead, the Derek Man's dead. That's when I looked up and I saw what I later found out is Brendan burning in the dirt.

Speaker 9

08:03

1 other worker died. Another lost his legs and later committed suicide. It was the deadliest accident in the Bakken in the last decade.

Speaker 1

08:12

Now, I know you're sad at this point, But brace yourself, because you're about to get angry. Because after the accident, OSHA visited the work site and found that it was missing several important safety features, including flame-retardant clothing and a safety slide. Now, you might think, as owners of that well, OASIS would come under a lot of scrutiny from OSHA.

Speaker 1

08:32

But you would be wrong about that.

Speaker 9

08:34

How come OASIS wasn't held accountable for this accident?

Speaker 12

08:38

OASIS doesn't have exposed employees on the job site. Rather, they hired a subcontractor. Now, that might sound like a bunch of legalese, but it's very important.

Speaker 1

08:47

Oh, it doesn't sound like a bunch of legalese. It sounds like a bunch of complete bullshit. But, it's actually true.

Speaker 1

08:54

Oasis technically had no employees there that day. And let me explain how that happened. Rather than hiring employees, companies like Oasis hire subcontractors. In this case, a company called Carlson Well Service, who employ the workers instead.

Speaker 1

09:08

And if you're thinking, well, surely Oasis must have had someone there to supervise the work site, yes, they did, but He wasn't an Oasis employee either. He was an independent contractor, a so-called company man, working for another firm hired by Oasis called Mitchell's Oilfield Service. So because Oasis had their company man, who didn't work for the company, overseeing the work site, and their subcontractor overseeing its own workers, that meant that, technically, no 1 working on Oasis' well worked for Oasis that day. And that is a magic trick so shitty, it's amazing Chris Angel didn't come out and shout, -"Mind freak!" at the end of it.

Speaker 1

09:47

-$Mind freak! I've got you, everyone! I mind-fruck you! -$Mind freak!

Speaker 1

09:52

-$Mind freak! And to be clear, Oasis was not found at fault for this accident. How could they be? In their deal with Carlson, they made sure to say that Carlson had...

Speaker 1

10:07

And then, and this is true, wrote... And look, bad things tend to happen when you're interested only in the results obtained. That is a policy that leads to a woman trying to lose 15 pounds for her wedding day saying, "[bleep], the juice cleanse isn't working, get me some heroin, I'm fitting in that Vera Wang. I don't care anymore!" -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Now, I should point out, Oasis wanted us to say they did absolutely nothing wrong.

Speaker 1

10:39

And also, that they have added new safety measures since the accident. Essentially saying their system was always fine, and that's why they have now completely fixed it. And look, subcontracting and workplace accidents are not unique to North Dakota. What is unique to North Dakota is the level of regulatory friendliness to oil companies.

Speaker 1

10:58

Something that their immensely charismatic governor likes to describe like this.

Speaker 13

11:04

We have created a friendly business climate in North Dakota. Our taxes and insurance rates are low. The regulatory environment is very reasonable.

Speaker 13

11:13

North Dakotans are friendly toward business and will work hard to help their employers be successful.

Speaker 1

11:20

He's making North Dakota sound like a magical pro-business utopia. Like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, which, come to think of it, had about the same safety record as North Dakota's oil fields. Now, now I think back.

Speaker 1

11:34

It was about the same body count. And he is not kidding. The thing is, the governor is not kidding about the friendly business climate, because Governor Dalrymple himself heads up the three-person industrial commission that oversees the majority of spills. And to give you a sense of the type of oversight they provide, last year, the New York Times found that 1 of the biggest oil producers in the area, Continental Resources, which had spilled 1.6 million gallons since 2006, had been fined only $222,000.

Speaker 1

12:05

Which would be bad enough, if those fines had not then been reduced down to just $20,000 because, and this is amazing, the commission typically settles for about 10% of the assessed penalties. Oil companies in North Dakota pay for their mistakes the same way that four-year-olds pay for their toys. Very rarely, and when they do, it's mostly just a symbolics gesture. Just...

Speaker 1

12:30

Just give the man the dollar, Jason. Give him the dollar. I know it really costs $10. I just want him to feel like he's doing something.

Speaker 1

12:38

-$10. -$10. Now, another member of that commission, Lynn Helms, claims this system actually works well due to the conditions that they attach.

Speaker 14

12:47

They agree to cut a check for that amount, unappealable, if a repeat violation occurs during that 1 to 5 year time period. It's like probation, and it really changes behavior.

Speaker 9

12:59

Helm says looking back on 5 years of data, no companies have had a repeat violation.

Speaker 1

13:05

Really? No companies have had a repeat violation? That is 1 hell of a claim. Let's take a look at that, shall we?

Speaker 1

13:11

Because their deals typically stipulate that a company must have no same or substantially similar violations within a year. So let's look at PetroHunt. They got a 90% discount on a $25,000 fine last year after an incident in which they spilled over 3,000 gallons of oil. And yet, 5 months later, which, and this is true, is less than a year...

Speaker 1

13:34

-...this happened. -...this happened.

Speaker 15

13:37

The state health department has responded to an oil spill near the town of Keene in McKenzie County. Petrol Hunt says about 600 barrels of oil leaked from a well, and it was not contained on site.

Speaker 1

13:49

600 barrels of oil, that is over 25,000 gallons. How is that not substantially similar? It's basically the exact same thing, only worse.

Speaker 1

14:00

It's the Hangover II of oil spills. It's wrong! And North Dakota's friendly regulations even extend to campaign finance. The oil industry is actually the top political contributor in the state, Which isn't that surprising.

Speaker 1

14:16

What is surprising is that as 1 state legislator pointed out, in North Dakota, you don't even have to spend campaign funds on your campaigns.

Speaker 16

14:25

When I first ran in visiting with candidates, I always asked, if you had any money left in the campaign account At the end of the campaign, what do you do with it? And 1 of the most fascinating answers I received was, well, you put it in your checking account. It's yours.

Speaker 16

14:39

That's income.

Speaker 1

14:41

Now, I know his flannel bow tie is extremely distracting. But what he's saying is horrifying. In North Dakota, you could theoretically find yourself saying, well, I gave my state rep money for TV ads and yard signs, but instead, he blew it all on a full-length mink coat and the glasses Buddy Holly was wearing when he died.

Speaker 1

15:01

That's not what it was for. You look good, but it's not what it was for. But you do look good. And I am not saying legislators in North Dakota do that, but that's a system you might want a state ethics commission to look into.

Speaker 1

15:16

Except for the fact that, and this really should not surprise you by now, North Dakota does not have an ethics commission. Which is pretty much guaranteeing that FIFA just found the location for its new international headquarters. They're coming, North Dakota! They're coming!

Speaker 1

15:34

And finally, North Dakota also allows the oil industry to use something called indemnification to avoid civil liability. And to show you how that works, let's go back to Oasis Petroleum and that deadly explosion we mentioned earlier. As you know, Oasis didn't have to pay any fine for that accident. However, they did wind up agreeing to pay Brendan Wegner's family an undisclosed settlement.

Speaker 1

15:59

Except... Not entirely. Because they also had an indemnification clause in their contract with Carlson, stating that, in cases like the accident that killed Brendan, Carlson would... So, theoretically, even if Oasis were negligent and found completely at fault, Carlson's insurance company could find itself paying a chunk of Oasis's settlement, which in this case, it did.

Speaker 1

16:30

And sure, technically, the family gets paid either way, but who pays matters. Payments are deterrents. And think of it like this, if every time you parked in front of a fire hydrant, someone else got a ticket, You'd probably be a lot less inclined to drive around the block looking for open parking spaces. And I understand that North Dakota wants to be business friendly and that plenty of businesses use indemnification clauses, but the danger involved in the oil industry makes it a little different, which is why some other states ban or limit indemnification clauses in the oil industry.

Speaker 1

17:09

Even Texas limits them. Texas! Texas! And Texas is so loosely regulated, their speed limit is let her rip.

Speaker 1

17:18

-♪ Let her rip ♪ -♪ Let her rip ♪ And their age of consent is just a drawing of a wink. -♪ Let her rip ♪ -♪ Let her rip ♪ Listen, listen, please, North Dakota, please listen. I get it. You're friendly, and that's fantastic.

Speaker 1

17:32

You had Billboards saying, be polite, and that's wonderful. But this has gone too far. Oil companies need to be held accountable when bad things happen. A fine is no good if it's a drop in the bucket, especially because, knowing these companies now, they'll probably miss that bucket and then somehow find a way to make someone else pay to clean up the f**king mess.

Speaker 1

17:53

So please, I would like to suggest to you a new approach. ♪♪

Speaker 3

17:59

Hey, North Dakota. We know you're a friendly place, full of nice people doing nice things. You like to shake hands, smile, and for some reason build a giant turtle out of wheel rims by the highway.

Speaker 3

18:11

That's a f***ing awesome turtle, North Dakota. Nice job. But lately, we've become concerned that oil companies have been taking advantage of you. And sure, they've brought lots of jobs and money to your state, and that's nice.

Speaker 3

18:24

But jobs and money shouldn't come at the expense of your land or your life. And right now, in some ways, You're less regulated than Texas. F***ing Texas. You're less regulated than whatever this is.

Speaker 3

18:37

So listen, just for once, it might be time to stop being polite and start getting mad. Even madder, North Dakota. No, much madder than that. Holy shit, not you possum.

Speaker 3

18:51

But the rest of you? Yes, that's better. Get pissed. Remember, people are dying and land is getting ruined, so come on, North Dakota.

Speaker 3

19:00

Let the ferocious animals lurking beneath your frozen exteriors out for once in your goddamn lives. Do it! And we're asking you in the most North Dakotan way we know how. With an actual billboard on 1 of your actual highways saying, Be Angry!

Speaker 3

19:14

Follow the course

Speaker 1

19:15

by the word,

Speaker 3

19:16

please. So please, be angry North Dakota. Be angry. Please!

Speaker 1

19:30

You