Surface Geophysical data collected along Blacktail Creek in June 2017 near Williston, North Dakota, USA

The extraction of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) resources often produces highly saline waste waters, which can be released to the river corridor environment during spills and pipe leakage. In North Dakota, USA more than 8,000 spills were recorded from 2008-2015, and more than half of those spills were related to pipelines. Data collected for this study were related to UOG wastewater leakage from a pipeline into a creek in the Williston Basin, North Dakota discovered on the January 6th, 2015. Although the spill was followed by extensive remediation efforts, we conducted geophysical surveys in June 2017 to assess the potential for waste water retention along the Blacktail Creek corridor as part of a larger evaluation of the post-spill period. This public data release is divided into (2) child items, one that contains and describes frequency domain electromagnetic induction (EMI) data, and another that contains electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) data. Both geophysical methods are highly sensitive to shallow saline groundwater.