The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land.  Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” -- deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas.  But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere?  Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?

The fallout from a ruptured oil pipeline in the Yellowstone River this month is spilling into a larger debate over whether the U.S. should allow the expansion of a pipeline that would carry more crude from Canada's oil sands to American refineries.

The July 1 accident at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Silvertip pipeline has been taken up by environmentalists and other opponents of TransCanada Corp.'s planned expansion of its Keystone XL pipeline, which is not related to the Exxon pipeline. The U.S. State Department, which must approve the expansion, has said it would make a decision by year's end.

Exxon Mobil Corp will bring in more people to mop up oil from a broken pipeline beneath the Yellowstone River as receding floodwaters reveal new contamination, federal officials said Friday.Also Friday, Montana environmental regulators said the pipeline may have leaked up to 1,200 barrels of oil into the scenic river. That equals 50,400 gallons and is 20 percent higher than prior estimates from Exxon Mobil.

Water levels on the Yellowstone have dropped six feet since the July 1 accident. Hundreds of logjams and debris piles, many coated in a layer of drying crude, now litter its banks and islands.

While ExxonMobil and government officials worked Saturday to clear a ruptured pipeline underneath the Yellowstone River of any residual oil, a small group of boaters began their own weeks-long survey of the river in an effort to document areas affected by the spill.

Called the Oily River Rendezvous, the group consisted Saturday of two kayakers and a pair of canoers from Montana and Arizona who plan to float the Yellowstone and its backwaters at least to Miles City and compile data as they go.