Ole and Lena Drill the Oil Companies

By Charlie Barber
Staff Writer

“North Dakota’s first oil and saltwater spill into Lake Sakakawea caught the industry unprepared for a lake cleanup, but that could soon change.” - Bismarck Tribune, 4/10/11

“Why play with disaster?  So many wells are near water.  There should be better precautions so that any major spill doesn’t hit the lake.” - Rep. Kenton Onstad, D-Parshall

Oil and saltwater spillage into Lake Sakakawea has allegedly caught the petroleum industry, as well as the major media in North Dakota, by surprise, but it was no surprise to residents of the Bakken, Three Forks area like Ole and Lena. 

Ole and Lena had moved to their family property in Northwest Dakota from Lake Wobegon in Minnesota a few years ago.  They saw a better pristine lifestyle in the Williston Basin and so they packed up and headed for their farm near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, at precisely the time that oil was discovered underneath their land.

Ole had wanted to sell all mineral rights for more beer and fishing money, but Lena talked him out of it by threatening divorce, and he swiftly came around. The only thing worse than being married to Lena would be getting divorced from her.

Oil company officials told Ole and Lena that they wanted to set up four rigs on their acreage, but were vague about where they were going to set them up, until Lena kept after them, and they were more vague about when and how they were doing it.

Ole and Lena soon found out.

While visiting relatives back in Lake Wobegon, their land had been invaded by the contracting oil company without securing their prior permission.  Valuable crop land had been torn up and destroyed by roads rammed in straight from the county highway, rather than in a more carefully planned, circuitous route—slightly costlier to the company, but which would respect the integrity of the farmer’s land and crops.

Ole was furious, almost violently so, as he told Lena:

Ole: Lena, I’ve half a mind to take my shotgun down to that oil company headquarters and tell them I’m duck hunting on their property like they are tramping all over ours.

Lena: Oh, Ole, don’t worry. Give that other half of your mind a rest. I called the head of the company yesterday and spoke the magic words.

Ole: Magic words! What are those?

Lena: “You are in trespass.” It’s a legal term, and it means that we can sue them for big bucks for trespassing on our land without asking our prior permission to tread on any inch of our land in order to drill for what’s under it. Even if we don’t win, it will cost them time, which they have a lot less of than money. They have lawyers, of course, and their contract with us gives them certain rights, but not if they don’t say “please” first. “Thank you” is not necessary. A check for our share of the petroleum that I negotiated will be just fine.

These companies are in a hurry, and they wouldn’t have contracted on our land if it didn’t have really choice spots to drill. They’ll be out here tomorrow, talking real polite, and promising to be a lot more careful before putting in wells two, three and four.  They have successfully bullied local governments, but they can’t fight all of their private partners if we are willing to push back a little.

Ole: That’s terrific Lena. Can any farmer or rancher who has contracted with these oil companies, and whose farming or grazing land has been messed up without his prior knowledge, call them up with the same magic words?

Lena: Oh sure. And they should get the same results a lot sooner than waiting around for Governor Dalrymple or the State Legislature to act. It’s just that many North Dakota farmers and ranchers in this region, like people all over the country, don’t know their rights under the law. Legal rights are a kind of power Ole, but you’ve got to use them.

Ole: Just like you use your brains Lena. Was the guy mad when you called?

Lena: Oh no, he was real polite, although there was about a half a minute pause between the time that I spoke the magic words and he responded. He knew I had him and his company dead to rights—our rights.

Everything went smoothly the next day, as Lena had predicted, but a few weeks later Ole came back all upset from an encounter with some North Dakota Legislators at the local Chamber of Commerce.  Like many small businessmen and landowners, Ole was still foolish enough to remain a member of his local Chamber of Commerce, under the impression that they represented any group of people except large corporations.

Unlike Kenton Onstad, these legislators were Republicans— completely unsympathetic to concerns of the environment, farmers or ranchers; moved only by the magic music of “drill, baby drill.” However much these Republicans might describe themselves as “conservative,” the word “conservation,” is foreign to them, like “the malefactors of great wealth” of over 100 years ago, attacked by President Teddy Roosevelt—a different kind of Republican from what we get nowadays.

Ole also had heard about all the free food and drink that lobbyists lavished on Legislators in Bismarck, and he thought that maybe, as an owner of a few oil wells, he had moved up in the world, and might catch something “on the cuff” in Williston.

Ole was sadly mistaken. Instead, he had run into District Republican Legislators,
furious about the exercise of rights that Lena had invoked against oil companies:

Ole: Lena, I just heard from Lars the Legislator, and he told me he was going to get all those House Republicans in Bismarck to do away with legal right of trespass, just to stop us and “teach us a lesson” about who was in charge. Brunhilde, the Senator from Valkyrie Heights on the Bakken, said she was gonna teach us a lesson too, while the Republicans were still in charge in both Houses.

Lena: Oh don’t worry Ole.  Lars and Brunhilde are just panicky that the people of North Dakota might wake up by watching what is going on in Wisconsin, Utah, and the National Football League.

If Lars, Brunhilde, and the Republicans eliminate trespass laws, we’ll just incorporate ourselves. Then we’ll search out a North Dakota affiliate of the oil corporations with a front lawn the size of a small golf course. Then we’ll drive tractor mowers on their property with the cutting bar set a few inches lower to deliver our message, using the protection of those new laws. They’ll get the picture real quick. If “aggressive lawn mowers” don’t work we’ll try something else. There’s always a way to fight power mad legislators who still haven’t figured out that they can’t change the laws for the rest of us without changing the laws for themselves as well.

Ole:  Why don’t the Republican legislators protect us? Oil companies don’t vote, we do. After all, we are Republicans, aren’t we?

Lena: Not much longer if they keep this up. At least our lawyer keeps her usual ten steps ahead of them.

Ole: Who is our lawyer? Do you mean we need a lawyer to protect us from the oil companies AND our Republican legislators?

Lena: Yup! I hired the same one I used when our niece wanted a divorce from her wife beating husband, and when I got worried you were getting too stupid about our mineral rights.

Ole: She was good! 

Lena:  Yup! Nothin’ like a good, experienced divorce lawyer to keep unruly husbands and oil companies in line.

HPR: There actually is a real, live “Lena,” who successfully used the phrase “you are in trespass” against an oil company’s rude and predatory exploitation of her contract with them.   

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