$16 Million In Fed Money Designated To Clean Up Old ND Wells; 2B Spent On Drllling/Fracking New Ones

[hatrack]

North Dakota's top oil and gas regulator had a problem. With winter bearing down, his department had yet to spend $16 million in federal coronavirus relief funds earmarked for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas well sites across the state, and the arrival of cold weather would halt the work. If the money wasn't spent by the end of the year, the state would lose it. So Lynn Helms, director of the state's Department of Mineral Resources, proposed a different use for the funds: paying oil companies to hydraulically fracture new wells.

The proposal landed in front of state lawmakers on Wednesday during a budget meeting that many members attended remotely, calling in from easy chairs and living rooms because of the state's surging coronavirus caseload. Despite pleas from some lawmakers that the money would be better spent helping nursing homes safely allow family visits or amplifying contact tracing, the committee approved Helms' request. Now North Dakota is poised to provide cash grants of up to $200,000 directly to any oil company that's ready to get to work.

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Scott Skokos, who heads the Dakota Resource Council, a local environmental group, said in an interview before the hearing that the repurposing of funds seemed to get things exactly backwards. Money that was supposed to clean up old oil wells will instead be used to bring new ones to life. And if the $16 million can't go toward that clean up because of the weather, he said, what about sending it directly to some of the state's residents who are struggling to pay bills or keep businesses open, as coronavirus cases rise to some of the highest levels in the country? "They're giving taxpayer dollars to the oil industry to frack wells with the hope it will bring the state more taxpayer dollars," Skokos said, "rather than taking the taxpayer dollars and actually using it to benefit taxpayers."

Many members of Skokos's group, who are mostly farmers and ranchers, have lost the use of portions of their land to decrepit well sites that were abandoned decades ago in previous oil busts. Helms has said the sites will be cleaned up next spring, once the ground thaws, using state funds instead. Even so, Skokos finds the repurposing of the money to frack new wells baffling. "This is just a wild misuse of taxpayer dollars," he said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28102020/north-dakota-coronavirus-stimulus-funding-fracking-oil-wells

[NoMoreRepugs]

1. A perfect example of RePutinican stupidity.

We have a glut of oil so of course u subsidize more drilling w taxpayers $$$$ rather than cleaning up their precious land.