Oil and wastewater spill data in North Dakota for 2004 through 2014, from several data sources.
This is the raw data used in Inside Energy's coverage of oil and wastewater spills in North Dakota. In this repo we provide the datasets used in several stories on this topic published in January and February of 2015.
| Our Story | Dataset(s) |
|---|---|
| Wastewater Spills In North Dakota: What The Data Tell Us | 20150130-nd-spills-summary-2006-2014 and 20150130-top-20-nd-operators-spills |
| State Officials Misrepresent North Dakota’s Spill Problem | 20150216-Spills-Wells-Totals-2006-2014 |
| North Dakota Oil and Gas Officials Want Corrections To Our Story. Here’s Our Response. | 20150223-nd-spills-summary-2004-2013 |
For our first spills story in this series (Wastewater Spills In North Dakota: What The Data Tell Us), the sources of our data are the New York Times Spills Database and the North Dakota Department of Health. Data also come from this spills summary spreadsheet, provided to us by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.
For our second spills story (State Officials Misrepresent North Dakota’s Spill Problem), we again use data from the spills summary spreadsheet, provided to us by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.
For our third spills story (North Dakota Oil and Gas Officials Want Corrections To Our Story. Here’s Our Response.), we again use the New York Times Spills Database, the North Dakota Department of Health, and the spills summary spreadsheet, provided to us by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources.
For the total spill count, we used the NYT Spills Database for 2006-October 14, 2014. That includes general incidents as well as 5 spills not in North Dakota's databases. For the remainder of 2014, we used the spill count provided by the North Dakota Department of Health's Oilfield and General Spills that were oil and gas related.
For 20150223-nd-spills-summary-2004-2013, the first 10 rows (through Total Wells) are exactly as provided by the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources. Forr the remaining 3 rows, (Spills to Wells Ratio; Year-to-Year Percent Increase, Wells; Year-to-Year Percent Increase, Spills), we used the data provided by the state to calculate spills-to-wells ratio (which we show to be increasing) and the year-to-year percent increase of both wells and spills.
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