Among the risks, according to confidential copies of inspection reports obtained by The New York Times, were plumes of improperly burned methane from oil wells.
One flare that was supposed to be burning gas was not lighted, allowing raw methane to spew into the air. In other spots, waves of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, were leaking at high levels from a storage tank.
Those hazards and others were not shared with Fort Berthold’s residents at a time when energy production in the region is booming. But the findings underscored the risks involved in the Trump administration’s decision to reverse a rule curbing leaks and flaring, both of which pose dangers and are increasingly common on federal and Indian lands across the West.
Like other communities around the country, Fort Berthold is confronting a tension at the heart of President Donald Trump’s unrelenting push to roll back regulations governing a range of industries: Cutting the costs associated with environmental protection can generate substantial short-term economic gains while producing longer-term and potentially profound health and environmental effects.
The Flaming Landscape
A 75 percent surge in oil production in the past two years has left Fort Berthold lighted by towering shafts of flame. Hundreds of controlled flares burn so bright in the cold night air that the sky turns a weird orange yellow, even as snow falls onto the frozen ground.
An estimated 3 billion cubic feet of gas is burned or released each month here — a volume that could heat about 600,000 homes. Energy companies have figured out a way to capture the oil, but their pipelines are not big enough to handle all the less valuable gas that comes out of the ground. Much of the excess is torched.
As oil and gas operations have intensified in this isolated stretch of North Dakota, so have residents’ concerns. The venting of unburned methane fouls the air with chemicals that are not only in some cases carcinogenic but over the next 100 years will be 30 times as potent a cause of global warming as carbon dioxide. At the same time, the improper burning of methane can create pollutants that cause a variety of respiratory problems.
“My children and grandchildren breathe in this air,” said Lisa DeVille, whose family has lived on the reservation for generations. “How is this going to affect our health?”
DeVille and her husband, Walter, are members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, the group of tribes living at Fort Berthold. She said they learned last year she had a respiratory condition that her doctor compared to symptoms common among oil field workers. She called it Bakken cough, after the geological formation that is yielding so much oil and gas in the Dakotas and Montana.
The Obama administration, concerned about the effects on health and global warming as well as the wasteful practice of simply burning off energy, moved to curtail leaks and flaring on federal lands and Indian reservations. But in September, under pressure from the energy industry, Trump’s Interior Department eliminated the rule’s most important provisions.
The move was in keeping with Trump’s effort to cut regulatory costs for industry and promote domestic energy production. And it will help protect a remarkable economic boom on this once-impoverished reservation, where the tribal government’s budget — 90 percent of which comes from energy-related sources — has surged over the past 15 years to $330 million from $20 million.
Tribal leaders and state officials here say they are committed to using their regulatory powers to try to confront the flaring and leaks. But in an interview last month, the top tribal oil and gas regulator, Carson Hood Jr., acknowledged he had no plans to cut production until pipelines could be built to handle all the excess gas. That means the intense flaring will probably continue for at least several years, or until the boom in oil drilling subsides.
And the state, which has its own flaring rules, recently moved to reconsider them, as it does not want to chase away any new investment by oil and gas companies, which fuel the state’s economy.
The leaks and flaring are an increasing source of tension at Fort Berthold. Many are focused on the cash from the energy industry that is pouring into community and tribal government coffers. The tribes and some families are paid royalties for each barrel of oil pulled from the ground, revenue that has changed many lives for the better.
“Sovereignty by the barrel,” is the slogan used by the MHA Nation’s Energy Division, which both regulates and promotes oil and gas drilling here.
Yet others are backing a lawsuit challenging Trump’s rollback of the federal rule, while also pressing tribal leaders to move aggressively on their own to confront the consequences of the burning and leaking of gas.
“This is not just an empty worry — this is very real worry,” said Joletta Bird Bear, whose family collects oil production royalties but is pushing for greater regulations on the reservation. “All you have to do is look around and you can see for yourself, the flares burning. They are huge. This is going to impact human life.”
An Upsurge of Wealth
The DeVilles set out for a drive through the Mandaree neighborhood of Fort Berthold to show off both the benefits and the costs that fracking has brought this tiny town.
Oil revenues allowed the MHA Nation to expand its elementary school. The tribes built an elaborate staging area for their annual summertime powwow, which draws hundreds of dancers and drum groups from around the United States and Canada.
Even the car the DeVilles used to cruise through their hometown — a 2019 Toyota Sequoia SUV — comes in part from industry money, as Lisa DeVille's mother receives large royalty payments from production on the land she owns, wealth she uses to help support her family.
Besides royalties, residents also receive disbursement checks cut from the oil and gas money the tribal government collects. Some 16,500 members received $3,000 each last year.
But these benefits often have serious costs. Funding for an early-childhood learning center came from a $1 million donation made by a pipeline company, Crestwood, after it was blamed for spilling more than 1 million gallons of fracking wastewater. The spill reached the lake that supplies the reservation’s drinking water.
“I am not against oil and gas — my family benefits too,” Lisa DeVille said. “I just want the industry to be held accountable for impacts they are causing here. What are you going to tell your children’s children: ‘I am sorry I took the money, and so now you don’t have clean air and clean land and clean water to live?’ ”
The intensity of the flaring — which has surged on Fort Berthold since 2016 — is on display across the reservation, where flares burn with so much power that they sound almost like jet engines. In warmer months, wheat fields need to be sprayed with water so the intense heat does not light them on fire.
A larger share of gas is flared in Fort Berthold than almost anywhere else in the United States. There is a severe shortage of pipelines and processing plants in the area, driving the need to burn. But it is more than just a matter of flames licking the sky.
The Denver-based team from the EPA that visited in June came with infrared cameras, air monitors and a GPS tool that tracked toxic chemical releases. Its findings demonstrated that flaring, which can be unhealthy on its own, was often just a hint of even more harmful gas leaks. Venting can release a variety of pollutants into the air, including volatile organic compounds like ethylbenzene, a possible carcinogen, and toluene, a neurotoxin that may result in birth defects. The compounds also are a factor in the formation of ozone, which can lead to asthma and heart attacks.
The Polluted Air
Companies are required to notify the Interior Department when they are flaring methane beyond the startup of a well. In 2005, the agency received only 50 applications for extended flaring. By 2014, the number had jumped to 1,250. The Interior Department did not respond when asked how many wells on federal and Indian lands flared in 2018.
As part of a broad strategy to slow climate change and also reduce wasteful burning of natural gas that if captured could be sold, the Obama administration adopted a rule in 2016 that put legal limits on the amount of flaring and leaking. The caps would have gotten tighter each year until 2026, when 98 percent of all gas produced on federal lands and Indian reservations was to be captured.
About 70 percent of the gas produced each month on the reservation is captured, according to the state, while the remainder is burned, leaked or intentionally vented. That means operators on Fort Berthold would probably have been targeted for enforcement if the rule had remained in effect.
The rule also required companies to perform semiannual inspections of their equipment on Indian reservations and federal lands to ensure there were no leaks, and to repair any within 30 days.
Moreover, it forced companies to get ahead of the leaks by replacing high-bleed pneumatic controllers, designed to release pressure by letting gas leak, with low-bleed devices.
The EPA estimated that the rule would reduce venting and leaks by 35 percent and flaring by 49 percent within a decade — while also saving enough natural gas nationwide to supply about 740,000 homes a year.
But it was only a matter of days after this rule was finalized that the campaign to kill it began. North Dakota joined with an oil and gas trade group and other states to sue the Interior Department, claiming the federal government was overstepping its authority and creating unnecessary regulations given state limits on flaring.
The Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a conservative advocacy group affiliated with Charles G. and David H. Koch, followed up by asking Congress to scrap the rule, an effort that fell short by two votes when Sen. John McCain of Arizona and two other Republicans opposed the repeal.
“Improving the control of methane emissions is an important public health and air quality issue,” McCain said, explaining his decision.
Once in power, the Trump administration moved on its own to postpone the rule, an act that a federal judge blocked after noting that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had “entirely failed to consider the benefits of the rule, such as decreased resource waste, air pollution and enhanced public revenues.”
Undeterred, the Interior Department moved again to remove most of the important provisions, a process it completed in September. Yet even then, the Trump administration, in formal rule-making documents, acknowledged that its actions would come with considerable costs.
Most notably, it estimated that an extra 299 billion cubic feet of natural gas would now be vented or flared over the next decade, a chunk of it at Fort Berthold.
A Tide of Change
The story of oil and gas at Fort Berthold, in a way, is the story of a long-delayed payback for injustices experienced by the three affiliated tribes that call Fort Berthold their home.
Their ancestors controlled vast swaths of the West. But they were assembled here on this North Dakotan land by the U.S. government in the 1870s, an area that a tribal history described as being known for its “unproductive soil, unfriendly climate, scant supply of wood, poor water, high winds, dust, drought, frost, flood, grasshoppers.”
The plight grew even more extreme by the 1950s when the U.S. government built a dam on the Missouri River, which splits Fort Berthold in two. The project flooded the center of the reservation and its most fertile lands, forcing most of the residents to relocate.
But there was a secret lurking here deep underground — a formation of oil and gas called the Bakken. When new drilling technologies emerged about a decade ago, they transformed Fort Berthold into one of the hottest spots in the world for energy production.
“Without choice, we were stuck here by the government,” said Hood, director of the MHA Nation’s Energy Division. “Lo and behold, we were put on top of one of the richest natural resources in North America. We end up being in a very lucrative position.”
This explains, in part, why some tribal leaders are pleased that the Trump administration has repealed most of the Obama Administration’s gas rule. The Interior Department is now telling the MHA Nation that it will be allowed to decide on its own how it wants to regulate methane flaring and venting.
But Hood said that some kind of action was needed.
“I got some flaring going on over here, and I got some flaring going on over there that you can’t see at the moment,” said, pointing in just about every direction visible from his office window.
“It is really a big concern for us as a nation,” he said, “having to breath this methane, benzene, all those dangerous elements that are in the natural gas itself. I really want to do the best that I can to protect the air for our people.”
Hood’s solution, as well as that of chairman of the tribe, Mark N. Fox, is to encourage the construction of pipelines and processing plants near or on the reservation to capture and ship out the gas — a process that could take years, and hit a wall if oil prices fall.
The tribes, Hood said, have also focused on trying to curb venting, the most harmful way to dispose of the unwanted gas, by sending a compliance officer to oil and gas sites with an infrared camera that can detect the emissions. But when pressed to detail how that effort was proceeding — and how much in fines his office had imposed for the widespread violations — Hood said he would not discuss the matter.
Back in Washington, the Trump-era EPA is now moving to weaken its own rule limiting harmful methane gas releases on new well sites.
“We are sort of powerless — this is our reality,” said DeVille as he and his wife completed their drive though the most intense Fort Berthold flaring zones. “This is our reality now.”
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A Regulation Undone: Natural Gas Flaring
THE REGULATION: After years of debate, the Interior Department in late 2016 put new limits on the flaring of natural gas produced on federal or Indian lands. When the gas is burned, it is wasted, and when it is burned improperly, it can cause respiratory problems.
The leaking of that gas is also harmful, and is a major contributor to climate change. The chemicals are in some cases carcinogens, while air pollution associated with the releases can lead to asthma and even heart attacks.
Starting in 2018, producers were required under the rule to capture 85 percent of the gas, with that number jumping to 98 percent by 2026. The Interior Department estimated that this would save 41 billion cubic feet of gas a year — enough to supply about 740,000 households.
THE ROLLBACK: In September 2018, after complaints from the oil and gas industry, the department reversed the flaring limits, arguing that state governments and Indian tribes could impose their own.
THE CONSEQUENCES: The Trump administration acknowledged that 299 billion cubic feet of gas would be lost, through venting or flaring, over the coming decade as a result of the changes.
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BY THE NUMBERS
71 percent: The portion of gas produced in the Bakken area of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota that is captured, according to a November tally by the state. The other 29 percent either leaks or is vented or flared — a rate far above what the now-revoked Interior Department rule would have allowed.
3 billion: The amount of gas, in cubic feet, that these flares may be burning off or releasing each month — a volume that could heat about 600,000 households. Oil production at Fort Berthold has jumped by 75 percent in the past two years. Gas production has surged, too, and energy companies are limited in their capacity to channel the gas into pipelines.
1,250: The number of applications the Interior Department received in 2014 for the extended flaring of methane. In 2005, the agency received only 50 applications.
$330 million: The budget of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation’s government, up from $20 million only 15 years ago. Ninety percent of the budget comes from energy-related sources.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.