In North Dakota, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) wields a shocking level of control over our state legislature. Powerful special interests create organizations with bland or attractive names, pool their wealth, and use their money and leverage to buy politicians and favorable public policy. This is at the same time when environmental incidents like oil spills, pipeline leaks, and improper hazardous waste disposal had become more common, frightening homeowners statewide. The commission frequently falls short of holding companies accountable for failure to uphold environmental and safety standards and generally uses a hands-off approach with industry. It puts three top elected officials directly in charge of an industry that, through its executives and political action committees, can and does contribute to the officials’ election campaigns.
North Dakota’s oil and gas regulatory setup is highly unusual. The governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner make up the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which regulates the drilling and production of oil and gas. Three elected officials would decide the matter. ConocoPhillips is the world’s largest independent energy production company, and they wanted permission from the state to create a 33,000-acre mega-unit so the company could make more money faster – at the cost of major harmful impacts on an important state park, more ruination of landowners’ properties, and smaller, slower payments to mineral owners. The more we tried to understand the complicated terms of the proposal, the more concerned we became. In 2011, the multinational corporation ConocoPhillips left a thick packet on our doorstep that they wanted us to sign. Our story is about how the fracking boom illustrates a larger national problem, how money decides who has the power. But with all the out-of-state oil money pouring in, that feeling has eroded over time. Until recent times, everybody trusted everybody until proven otherwise. Our home state, North Dakota, is like a moderate-sized city with very long streets. The more we learned about our broken political system over the years, the more determined we became to take it back. The authors are married and live in Bismarck, North Dakota.
This guest piece is co-written by Ellen Chaffee, a retired university president and David Schwalbe, a retired rancher, both in their 70s.
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