Michigan is commonly recognized as a manufacturing center and for its splendid tourist attractions. Lesser known is Michigans role as a leader in the production of oil and gas. Since the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in Saginaw in 1925, Michigan has grown to become the 12th-largest natural gas and 17th-largest crude oil producer of the 34 states producing oil and gas. Michigans petroleum heritage spans 64 of the states 68 Lower Peninsula counties and has played a role in shielding communities from the financial devastation of the Great Depression, funding acquisition of hundreds of public recreation projects through the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, and rising to meet environmental challenges through improving technologies. Michigan Oil and Gas documents that heritage with photographs from the Clarke Historical Library Norman X. Lyon and Michigan Oil & Gas News Collections.

InsideClimate News won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for this four-part narrative and six follow-up reports into an oil spill most Americans have never heard of. More than 1 million gallons of oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River in July 2010, triggering the most expensive cleanup in U.S. history -- more than 3/4 of a billion dollars -- and after almost two years the cleanup still isn't finished. Why not? Because the underground pipeline that ruptured was carrying diluted bitumen, or dilbit, the dirtiest, stickiest oil used today. It's the same kind of oil that the controversial Keystone XL pipeline could someday carry across the nation's largest drinking water aquifer. Written as a narrative, this page-turner takes an inside look at what happened to two families, a community, unprepared agencies and an inept company during an environmental disaster involving a new kind of oil few people know much about.

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