The $3.7 billion pipeline, slated to be in service by the end of 2016, would traverse North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and IL, moving up to 570,000 or more barrels per day of “light sweet crude oil” on its way to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Construction has been stopped for days near the main protest site at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers.
There have been reports of violence and intimidation at the protest campground that has been occupied for several weeks in south-central North Dakota near the border with South Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Native American Tribe’s reservation (see Shale Daily, Aug. 26). In December, Congress lifted the forty year ban on crude oil exports. Members of the Tribe prevented the developers’ earthmovers from digging trenches for the pipeline.
A judge is expected to rule on a lawsuit submitted by the Sioux against the Army Corps of Engineers for lack of consultation. If allowed to go forward, it will carry almost 24 million gallons of Bakken oil each day through North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa, before connecting to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois.
The 1,100-mile pipeline, which is estimated to cost $3.7 billion, is almost halfway complete.
However, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe are protesting the pipeline.
When reached for a comment, a spokesperson with the pipeline project declined to defend the firm’s earlier statements about “100% domestic consumption”.
“We’re really passionate about making sure that landowners are protected, that our water is protected, and we’ll do what we have to do non-violently to respond to the continued efforts to construct this pipeline, especially where landowners have said no”, he added.
“The construction and operation of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline poses detrimental and irreversible risks to our current and, most importantly, our seventh generation. calls for unity on environmental issues”, she writes. A representative for the contractor for Dakota Access, Precision Pipeline, asked the protesters to leave. It also involves significant intramural squabbling within the Democratic Party that pits two of its most influential coalitions, organized labor and the environmental movement, in what has been an ongoing jobs-versus-environment debate throughout the country.
Since mid-August, 37 people have been arrested in connection with pipeline protests in North Dakota.
Iowa State Patrol Major Randy Kunert said it was unfortunate some protestors elected to be arrested because that was not what troopers wanted to do.
However, construction has continued elsewhere.
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Opponents of the pipeline in Iowa and South Dakota raised concerns that the project might not serve the public interest the recent decision to lift the ban on exporting crude would mean oil transported by the pipeline might be destined for foreign markets. Fallon says the pipeline company is calling for and taking desperate steps to stop peaceful protestors of their project. Work was halted, and pipeline workers evacuated area.
