Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 36
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The state auditor said Thursday that an examination of North Dakota's electoral systems conducted in response to voter concerns found that they are "incredibly secure." Auditor Josh Gallion said he undertook the review in response to concerns nationally that false claims of election fraud and conspiracies are threats to democracy. "We looked at any potential weaknesses in the election system of our state that could be exploited by someone with nefarious intent," Gallion said. "The determination after extensive review f...
PHOENIX (AP) — A North Dakota construction company favored by President Donald Trump has received the largest contract to date to build a section of Trump's signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Republican U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota confirmed the $1.3 billion contract for building the 42-mile section of wall through "really tough terrain in the mountains" in Arizona. That's about $30 million per mile. Cramer said Fisher Sand and Gravel Co. offered the lowest price for the project. He did not know how many companies bid. Trump...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Hoping to avoid what North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has called a potential "economic Armageddon," state and industry officials have formed a group intended to help oil and gas producers recover from falling crude prices due to meager demand amid the coronavirus outbreak. State Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms announced the Bakken Restart Task Force on Wednesday as the number of oil wells in the state has decreased by more than 40% in recent weeks and oil production hit its lowest level in five years. Helms said in a st...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota's largest manufacturer, Doosan Bobcat, resumed operations Monday after a two-week shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, putting some 2,300 people back to work. The company's restart came as the state is wrestling with an outbreak in Grand Forks that has shut down LM Power, a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant, that as of Monday had grown to 128 employees or associated people. Gov. Doug Burgum said Monday that the state-owned Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks was temporarily shut down after an employee t...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Tommy Fisher peered into a Fox News camera and talked up his North Dakota-based company's ability to build a border wall faster and cheaper than others could, with technology "so revolutionary, it's like comparing the iPhone to a pay phone." Fisher Sand and Gravel, he said, was eager to help President Donald Trump deliver on a key campaign promise. "Hopefully the president will see this," Fisher said during the April appearance on "Fox & Friends First," part of a blitz on conservative media over several months as the c...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Tommy Fisher's ambitious plan to win a border wall contract included what could be the next best thing to making a pitch directly to President Donald Trump himself — talking to him through his favorite cable TV channel, Fox News. And it just may have worked. Fisher's North Dakota-based firm was awarded a $400 million contract this week to build 31 miles of wall in Arizona after he made numerous appearances on Fox, repeating a Trumpian boast that he could build the wall, faster, better and cheaper than anyone else. It did...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A pipeline that carries tar sands oil from Canada through seven states has leaked an unknown amount of crude oil over more than quarter-mile swath in northeastern North Dakota, state environmental regulators said Wednesday. State Environmental Quality Chief Dave Glatt told The Associated Press that regulators were notified late Tuesday night of the leak near Edinburg, in Walsh County. Glatt said pipeline owner TC Energy shut down the pipeline after the leak was detected. The cause of the spill is under investigation. T...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota's Health Department disregarded its own policy in updating the volume of a 2015 pipeline spill at a natural gas processing plant, and it remains unclear whether promised quarterly inspections of the site have been done in the past two years as cleanup continued. Oklahoma-based Oneok Partners LP reported a 10-gallon (38-liter) spill of natural gas liquids, or "condensate," from an underground pipeline at its Garden Creek gas plant near Watford City in July 2015. The company told the state last October that i...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A 2015 pipeline spill of liquid natural gas in western North Dakota initially reported as just 10 gallons is at least hundreds of thousands of gallons larger and may take another decade to clean up, state health officials said Tuesday. Oklahoma-based Oneok Partners LP reported the 10-gallon spill of natural gas liquids, or "condensate," from a pipeline at its Garden Creek gas plant near Watford City in July 2015. A report by the North Dakota Health Department said "ground around the pipe was saturated with natural gas c...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's decision to vote against Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court defies her state's heavy support for President Donald Trump, but could boost the vulnerable Democrat's standing with independents and women. In a politically fraught decision Thursday just a month before the Nov. 6 election, Heitkamp cited concerns about the federal judge's temperament in announcing her opposition. Heitkamp was one of a handful of senators who had not declared how she intended to vote. "In my judgm...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Fearing sanctions by the state, some North Dakota oil drillers have begun cutting output to control the amount of natural gas that's being burned off at well sites and wasted as a byproduct of crude production, industry and state officials say. Rebounding oil prices and technology advances in western North Dakota's oil patch have goosed crude production, spurring unanticipated record levels of natural gas that comes with it, said Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority. The state's g...
BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) — Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota got a hard sell last week from President Donald Trump, who gave Cramer and his wife a personal tour of the West Wing and used the gilded luster of the newly renovated Oval Office to entreat Cramer to challenge popular Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. It didn't work: Cramer turned down Trump, who had also called him about the race last fall. It's the latest in a string of complications for Senate Republicans, who are clinging to a paper-thin majority and entering a m...
A Minnesota man who lived in a house with the decomposing bodies of his mother and twin brother for about a year said he could not bring himself to report their deaths to authorities. "I was traumatized," Robert James Kuefler told The Associated Press on Saturday. "What would you do?" White Bear Police Capt. Dale Hager said Kuefler, 60, was charged this week with interference with a dead body or scene of death because Kuefler moved his brother's body. Hager said both the brother and the mother died of natural causes in 2015. Several months...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota oil drillers and U.S. Sen. John Hoeven want federal geologists to reevaluate the amount of recoverable crude oil in the state, saying a new assessment likely would show stronger production potential and attract investment. The U.S. Geological Survey once said two massive shale formations found in North Dakota held the largest continuous oil accumulation it ever assessed. But the title was given to a formation in Texas' Permian Basin last year, after a USGS assessment found nearly three times the amount of r...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Cleanup is finally in sight four years after a pipeline break sent more than 20,000 barrels of oil oozing across a wheat field in northwestern North Dakota, state regulators said Friday. Excavation of the affected site is scheduled for completion by the end of the month, with the land ready for replanting next spring, North Dakota Health Department environmental scientist Bill Suess said. The massive spill from the Tesoro pipeline was discovered by a Tioga farmer in September 2013 and has been called one of the largest o...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The Trump administration rejected North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum's request for a "major disaster declaration" to help cover some of the estimated $38 million cost to police protests of the Dakota Access pipeline, a spokesman for the Republican governor said Thursday. Burgum publicly announced in April his letter to President Donald Trump seeking the disaster declaration to pave the way federal aid. The governor was notified in May that the request was denied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Burgum spokesman Mike...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — If you want to live in a governor's mansion without being elected, North Dakota has a deal for you. With a catch. The state wants to preserve the 10,000-square-foot home that has served North Dakota's first families for 57 years, while making way for a larger $5 million mansion. But that means the sprawling house needs to be moved. No later than September. Unpretentious and sturdy, the prairie-style brick Governor's Residence has stood since 1960 as a metaphor for the state. Lawmakers have been attempting to replace the ho...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The end of the line may be in sight for a North Dakota safety program aimed at lowering the risk of disastrous train derailments involving the state's crude oil. The pilot program, which includes two rail safety inspectors and a manager to supplement inspections by the Federal Railroad Administration, or FRA, is halfway through its four-year run this month and likely will be scrapped in two years, said House Majority Leader Al Carlson and his Republican Senate counterpart, Rich Wardner. They said the program duplicates f...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — TransCanada Corp. is reassessing whether oil producers in North Dakota and Montana are still interested in shipping crude through its long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline now that they have other new options to ship their product, including the Dakota Access pipeline. The Calgary-based company's announcement this month comes with the Keystone XL still needing approval of its proposed route through Nebraska and with the Dakota Access, which was designed to transport about half of North Dakota's oil production, expected to b...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Worried North Dakota's burgeoning wind-energy industry may be threatening the state's coal-fired power plants, a Republican lawmaker has proposed legislation that would halt wind-generation projects for two years. Mandan Sen. Dwight Cook said the state's wind industry enjoys more favorable tax incentives and less onerous regulations than coal factories, putting them at an unfair advantage. He also said the intent of his proposal is to ensure a reliable source of electricity "Coal plants are shutting down and my a...
CANNON BALL, N.D. (AP) — Construction crews have resumed work on the final segment of the Dakota Access pipeline, and the developer of the long-delayed project said Thursday that the full system could be operational within three months. Meanwhile, an American Indian tribe filed a legal challenge to block the work and protect its water supply. The Army granted Energy Transfer Partners formal permission Wednesday to lay pipe under a North Dakota reservoir, clearing the way for completion of the 1,200-mile pipeline. Company spokeswoman Vicki G...
CANNON BALL, N.D. (AP) — With the federal government about to green-light the final phase of the Dakota Access pipeline, opponents of the project protested around the country Wednesday in an action some dubbed their "last stand." Some members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which has been at the center of the debate for nearly a year, urged "emergency actions" via social media. The Indigenous Environmental Network told people to target fuel-transportation hubs and government buildings and to expect violence and mass arrests. Protesters p...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A North Dakota lawmaker urged colleagues on Monday to slap tighter penalties on people involved in riots, the latest measure the Republican-controlled Legislature is considering that was spawned by ongoing protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. Under the proposal, those convicted of participating in a riot involving more than 100 people could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine — double the current penalties for a lower-end felony. Participation in smaller-sized riots, currently a misdemea...
CANNON BALL, N.D. (AP) — Most of the demonstrators who gathered on the North Dakota plains to oppose the Dakota Access oil pipeline declared victory and departed their snowy protest camp last month after the Army announced it would halt the project. Now that President Donald Trump's administration is pushing to complete the pipeline, the few hundred protesters still living on the wind-whipped prairie must decide what to do — accept the likely defeat and leave, or stay and keep fighting. Some vow to remain, but Trump's action seems unlikely to...
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota's Republican-led and largely oil-friendly Legislature is quickly introducing a raft of bills spurred by the bitter dispute between Dakota Access protesters and law enforcement, from restricting face coverings at protests to requiring the state to sue the federal government as a means of recouping millions in policing costs. Sen. Kelly Armstrong, R-Dickinson and the state GOP chairman, said the measures are motivated by residents' frustration with the ongoing protests in the southern part of the state, which a...
