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

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") 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 Mexicoduring 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’sKeystone XL tar sands export pipeline in August 2008.

From Common Dreams