The Global Game of Oil Pipelines by Gulshan Dietl

Author:Gulshan Dietl [Dietl, Gulshan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Industries, Social Science, Energy, Political Science, Business & Economics, Geopolitics, General
ISBN: 9781000505597
Google: 3PJMEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 59789272
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Dakota Access Pipeline

According to the US Department of Mineral Resources, North Dakota’s Pipeline Authority (PA) was established by the Legislature in 2007. The Authority was created for the purpose of diversifying and expanding the North Dakota economy by facilitating the development of pipeline facilities to support the production, transportation and utilisation of North Dakota energy-related commodities. The Authority may participate in a pipeline facility through ‘financing, planning, development, acquisition, leasing, rental, joint ownership, or other arrangements’.81 The Pipeline Authority, acknowledging safety to be the top priority, does not regulate or work with the companies regarding safety compliance for which the North Dakota Public Service Commission under the Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety is responsible.82

The Dakota Access Pipeline Limited (DAPL) website provides a fact-sheet of the physical details of the project: The Pipeline built at the cost of $3.8 billion is a 1, 172-mile underground state-of-the-art 30” pipeline extending from the Bakken production area to Illinois. The pipeline transports domestically produced light, sweet crude oil from North Dakota to major refining markets in a more direct, cost-effective, safer and more environmentally responsible manner than other modes of transportation, including rail or truck. The Bakken Formation is a massive rock unit of about 200,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada. The pipeline route goes from the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in North Dakota and runs southeast through South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, ending near Patoka.83 Dakota Access doesn’t cross an international border and so doesn’t require permission from the State Department.

In Illinois, it is joined by pipelines arriving from New Orleans in Louisiana, from Pontiac in Michigan, from Owensboro in Kentucky, from Alberta in Canada via the Keystone Pipeline – also controversial. More than a dozen separate lines converge around Patoka, running underground, then turning down ‘pipeline alley’ to feed what is known as the Patoka Oil Tank Farm. More than 50 enormous white oil tanks, each holding about 5 million gallons, or what the US consumes every nine minutes. Various groupings of tanks are owned by the world’s major oil companies: ExxonMobil, Marathon, BP.84

From the very inception of the project, it was entangled in litigation. Through the long legal procedures, the company had to acquire more than a thousand certificates, permits and approvals from the North Dakota Public Service Commission, South Dakota Public Service Commission, the Iowa Utilities Board, the Illinois Commerce Commission and the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE). In one of the briefs submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for developing the DAPL, said that even a temporary or limited injunction would have devastating long and short-term impacts and the harms would be irreparable. It said that the customer contracts could be permanently lost if Dakota Access’ 1 January 2017 delivery schedule wasn’t kept.85 In addition, 8,000 workers would be affected and losses of over $430 million would occur. Just demobilising the construction could cost $200 million.86

The

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