WILLISTON-The Dakota Access Pipeline is now being constructed across four states, starting in North Dakota and ending in IL.
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Dakota Access is being built by Energy Transfer Partners LP and its affiliate, Sunoco Logistics Partners LP.
Design and construction of the pipeline has not protected the sacred water and ancestral burial grounds of the Sioux people.
In fact, according to reporting on Wednesday by InsideClimate News, “s$3 enior officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and two other federal agencies raised serious environmental and safety objections to the North Dakota section” of the pipeline-“the same objections being voiced in a large protest by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that has so far succeeded in halting construction”.
The local sheriff’s office told the Associated Press the protesters could face misdemeanor charges after blocking access to the site. A representative for the contractor for Dakota Access, Precision Pipeline, asked the protesters to leave.
“Standing Rock is standing for something and we’re there standing with them”, Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Mark Fox said. Johnson notes that the pipeline provides a “competitive option” to bring Bakken barrels to the Gulf Coast, where “some of it may be exported”.
Pipelines are not flexible in the same way crude-by-rail is, but they do offer a safe, efficient and cost-effective way to transport crude oil over long distances.
Attorneys for both sides argued about whether Paradigm needed the tribes’ consent to install the two pipelines, which will be owned by Sacagawea Pipeline Co., a joint venture between Paradigm, Phillips 66 and Greywolf Midstream LLC. We are like FedEx.
“We’ll be back soon, I don’t know about tomorrow…this is the prelude”, says Fallon, who promises future protests. The same company is also behind the Trans-Pecos pipeline in Big Bend.
Earlier this month, Energy Transfer Partners presented at an infrastructure conference sponsored by Citibank, highlighting the Dakota Access Pipeline as a “growth project” under a section about how the company is “exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on USA energy exports”.
Suddenly, though, those plans are in limbo after environmental activists sought an injunction in the District Court in Washington D.C.to halt construction of the project as it is set to begin in North Dakota.
The tribe’s request coincided with a declaration of emergency across several counties by North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, as well as unsubstantiated claims by a local sheriff that pipe bombs, molotov cocktails and other potentially risky implements had been spotted.
In a measure of the divide in the party, Hillary Clinton has refused to take a position on the Dakota Access Pipeline project, reflecting her presidential campaign’s desire to appease organized labor – or at least not antagonize it. “They are all concerned about this pipeline and the damage it could do to the land”.
But the firm had more than a passive role in the decision to repeal the export ban.
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North Dakota crude oil production is too low to support the development of the planned east-bound Sandpiper pipeline, Enbridge Energy announced.
