Dakota Access Preparing To Move Oil

Oil could start flowing through the highly contested $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline as early this week. The company building the Dakota Access pipeline says the project remains on track to start moving oil this week despite recent “coordinated physical attacks” along the line.  Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners didn’t detail the attacks, but said they “pose threats to life, physical safety and the environment.”

Two American Indian tribes have battled the $3.8 billion pipeline in court for months, arguing it’s a threat to water. The company has said the pipeline will be safe.  An appeals court rejected the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Nations’ request for an emergency injunction to stop the pipeline from becoming operational.

Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia cleared the way for the startup, when he turned down two North Dakota tribes’ request for a preliminary injunction to prevent oil from flowing under Lake Oahe.

The 1,172-mile, four-state pipeline constructed almost entirely on private land is 99 percent complete, but a federal easement which was obtained in February-was required in order to finish the final 1,100-foot stretch in North Dakota.  When complete, the pipeline will move crude oil from the Bakken field in North Dakota to a shipping point in Patoka, Illinois via 30-inch diameter pipes, and then connect to an existing reconfigured pipeline.

The pipeline consists of more than 700 miles of existing pipeline that has been converted to crude oil service from Patoka to Nederland, Texas.  The two pipelines are expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2017.

The approval in February was granted after President Trump issued an executive order to expedite the process. The US Army Corps of Engineers originally granted the easement for the pipeline in July, but withdrew it in December under political pressure from thousands of protesters camped near the construction site at Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

The Corps abandoned the additional environmental review launched in December and argued in court that it undertook a two-year review of the project’s impact on water quality and historic relics, including 389 meetings with 55 tribes. The company rerouted the pipeline 140 times in response to concerns raised.

Greenpeace and a group of more than 160 scientists dedicated to conservation and preservation of threatened natural resources and endangered species have spoken out against the pipeline.   Many Sioux tribes say that the pipeline threatens the Tribe’s environmental and economic well-being, and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance.

Protests at sites in North Dakota began in the spring of 2016 and drew indigenous people from throughout North America creating the largest gathering of Native Americans in the past hundred years.  In January, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department released figures showing the state and local policing of the protests have cost $22.3 million since August 10 2016.