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Page added on June 3, 2017
Crude Oil Begins To Flow Through Controversial Dakota Access Pipeline
Crude oil is now flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline, despite months of protests against it by Native American tribes and environmental groups.
The pipeline spans more than 1,000 miles from North Dakota to Illinois and cost some $3.8 billion to construct. It is expected to transport approximately 520,000 barrels of oil daily.
“Construction on the project was supposed to wrap up late last year,” as Prairie Public Broadcasting’s Amy Sisk reported. “But protests led to delays in permitting the final stretch of the pipeline under the Missouri River in North Dakota.” At least 761 people were arrested during the standoff, according to The Associated Press.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation lies just downstream from the place where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River, vow to continue fighting. They fear that a pipeline leak could contaminate their drinking water and sacred lands.
“Just because the oil is flowing now doesn’t mean that it can’t be stopped,” Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement.
A lawsuit from the tribe is still pending in federal court. “The tribe wants a judge to shut the pipeline down and says a thorough environmental review of the project must be completed,” Sisk added.
During President Trump’s first month in office, he reversed a decision by the Obama administration and called on the Army to expedite the approval process for the section of the pipeline that had not yet been built.
As The Two-Way reported, a federal judge in March denied a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop construction, clearing the way for the completion of the pipeline.
The pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, argues that the pipeline represents a “more environmentally responsible manner than other modes of transportation, including rail or truck.”
The tribe has pointed out three separate incidents of pipeline leaks recently in the area. The Associated Press described what happened:
“The Dakota Access pipeline and a feeder line leaked more than 100 gallons of oil in western North Dakota in separate incidents in March, and the Dakota Access line leaked 84 gallons of oil in northern South Dakota in April. No waterways were affected.”
If you’re catching up on the Dakota Access Pipeline issue, check out our timeline of key events here.
16 Comments on "Crude Oil Begins To Flow Through Controversial Dakota Access Pipeline"
Davy on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 8:28 am
When these so called environmental and social protestors protest modernism then I will support them. Until then they are just hypocritical fake green influenced by and spreading fake news. Believing in fake news is delusion and denial and spreading it is a lie. We cannot have our cake and eat it. There are consequences for actions. Reality is not nice and fair. We live modernism because of techno optimism powered by surplus energy and in modernism’s case this surplus energy is unsustainable and non-resilient in any arrangement.
A KW is a KW I agree but a KW of modernism is still a KW of modernism. If you are going to live modern and have what we have you are still going to have the consequences of its waste stream both physical and abstract. There is no green modernism like we want to think. Fossil Fuels are dirty and so is techno optimism. The degree of dirty and the ends of that means should be the discussion. Don’t protest fossil fuels unless you protest the behaviors and lifestyles that do not change just because we change energy sources. We are destructive as moderns at the population levels we are at.
Alternatives to fossil fuels might extend things and might be a little bit cleaner but not much. The reason is behaviors will not change. We want more from less and we want more performance without control to our discretionary wants and individual rights of expression. Our world of cooperative competition allows for all manners of behavior beyond control in this arena. Sure we don’t allow murder but we allow all manners of destructive wants to be satisfied because of protection of individual rights in the market based system of globalism. Satisfaction is just a price. Our complexity and population levels are directly related to the huge potential of globalism. Without this arrangement a deep drop in economic activity and population will occur.
At some point there are tradeoffs. In the case of fossil fuels and protest there are very big tradeoffs. We can eliminate fossil fuels but we will also eliminate population and complexity. Until we transition to new energy sources with adapted behavior with smaller populations then this is just the activity of self-delusion. We are a long way from transition away from fossil fuels in scale and time frame. Leaving fossil fuels at this point will kill people. At least they are on to something that fossil fuels will kill us. They have half the equation right.
We protest because things are not right but we are in denial of why they are not right. Real green is something very different from modernism. I am not against these protestors desires for something different. I am not against alternatives to fossil fuels. What I am against are lies and denial. If we want to change things then we need to accept the reality of the consequences per honest science not coopted market based science and academic ideology based science. We need to realize a huge step into an unknown with consequences that will likely be very damaging if not fatal.
Sissyfuss on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 9:37 am
Agree with most that you say, Davy but for the protests of the guardians to have any concrete effect then they must start greasing the palms of the politicos on a scale commensurate with that of the corporates. Therein lies the rub.
Davy on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 9:56 am
Sissy, lets burn the friggen house down for all I care it is going to burn anyway but let’s be honest about it. That is how I feel. In the end I want a little bit of meaning to go along with the chaos. Burning down the house does not mean a new house it means facing the cold stiff wind of decline. If that’s the game plan let’s get after it.
Sissyfuss on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 10:07 am
Do’t worry,Davy. President Nero is striking matches left and right but so far has only managed to burn his fingers. He’ll get better at it I’m sure.
Midnight Oil on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 10:18 am
Yes Sir…FULL SPEED AHEAD in cutting our own throats to scrap a few more years cruising the ,”Freeways” of LA!
Way to go GUYS..thanks protesters as a spur in our consciousness to remind us on our folly!
Dredd on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 10:56 am
Crude crud is flowing. How quaint.
rockman on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 11:16 am
Sissy – Actually the tribe didn’t need to grease any palms to have prevented the construction of the DAPL. All it needed to do was lobby President Obama and convince him to approve the border crossing permit of the Keystone XL pipeline. The sole economic justification for the DAPL was to more economically ship the Bakken oil out of the state. When the original permits were filled the primary rationale supporting the request was the continuous delay of KXL.
I’ve explain the details again since there are still a few folks in the dark about the full dynamics at play.
Had the KXL border crossing permit been approved by President Obama every bbl of oil flowing down the DAPL today would be flowing down the Keystone Pipeline. Yes, there are two different pipelines: K Pipeline and KXL pipeline. The K pipeline, crossing the US/Canadian border, began flowing oil ACROSS THE BORDER in 2010. Yes, during President Obama’s first term at which time he made no effort to restrict its commissioning. The K pipeline that also passes by the Standing Rock reservation. Just as the DAPL does. And no: just like the K pipeline, it doesn’t cross the tribe’s land.
Look at the map:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline
The K pipeline was at capacity full of the oil sands production and could not take on any Bakken oil. Which is why so much Bakken oil was shipped by the more expensive rail system. The northern leg of KXL was specifically planned to take the oil moving down the K pipeline and open it up the K pipeline for Bakken oil transport. IOW with the northern segment of KXL completed there would have been no need for the DAPL. And the DAPL permit process had been relatively easy given that it didn’t cross the border and only about 1% of the lands it crossed required approval of the US govt. Such as that very short section running under the lake. And not only was the rationale for the DAPL not a secret, it was the primary arguing offered in its planning.
BTW there was a bit of additional lobbying done with politicians over the DAPL by native Americans other the the Standing Rock tribe. Done by another Sioux tribe with a reservation about 50 miles north of the Standing Rock reservation. That tribe lobbied on behalf of the DAPL because it would transport Bakken oil from its producing leases on the reservation as well as potentially inducing more drilling on its lands.
Apparently a measure of how “sacred” any of the lands are to tribes in N Dakota is a function of the revenue stream a tribe will (or won’t) receive. LOL.
And this is not a new story told here. Years ago the Rockman repeatedly explained that not only was delaying the border crossing section of KXL not a “great success” as environmentalists were claiming but just the opposite. But since the Rockman worked in the oil patch why believe him? Which ignores the obvious FACT that nothing would have pleased the Rockman and 99% of his US cohorts more then NOT seeing the KXL built. Except, of course, if the US govt had banned all Canadian oil being pumped across our border. Remember how the Rockman et al make a living: we sell oil produced in the US. Importing 3 million bopd directly competes with our efforts to sell oil to US refineries. It was the Canadian producers, the pipeline company and the US refineries that lobbied hard for KXL. Not the US E&P companies that were financially damaged by all that Canadian oil dumped into the US market place.
Again, it ain’t rocket science. All it takes to fully understand the dynamic is a bit of UNBIASED common sense.
onlooker on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 11:24 am
Sorry to say that protests, us talking here and anything else is not going to change the inevitable collapse of our Environment and Economy. Just alot fuss from people on the Titanic
coffeeguyzz on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 2:14 pm
Rock
That is an excellent description with one minor correction.
The native Americans upriver from Standing Rock are NOT Sioux, they are from the tribes Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, commonly referred to as TAT – the Three Affiliated Tribes.
The Arikara, especially, are historical enemies of the Sioux.
Located on the Fort Berthold Reservation, about half the size of Delaware, 6,000 or so recognized tribal members live, with the remaining 10,000 living elsewhere.
One additional observation regarding water protection …
The new water treatment center for Standing Rock is located 70 miles downstream at Fort Yates.
The DAPL ALREADY crosses the Missouri 20 miles upstream from the water intake for Williston with, clearly, no objections whatsoever.
rockman on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 3:17 pm
Thanks. Didn’t think they Sioux but too lazy to look it up along with the other river crossings. LOL
deadlykillerbeaz on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 6:33 pm
If the members of the Standing Rock Tribe would have a thousand oil wells on the reservation, the oil would have been flowing six months ago through the pipeline and the protest would have never happened.
DMyers on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 9:42 pm
Thank God, it’s beginning to flow, but curse the Devil, it still may never get here. I need it, you need it, we all need it. So this is potentially a very big issue.
Let it snow? No, let it flow, let it flow, let it flow. Leaks? Don’t worry be happy. We don’t believe in them, and we don’t accept that they ever occur. Let the pristine be damned. We have a civilization to prolong here.
rockman on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 11:48 pm
D – “…it still may never get here. I need it, you need it, we all need it. So this is potentially a very big issue.”. Not really from the consumer’s point of view: nothing has changed for them. Just a guess but you don’t appear to know that the refineries have been getting this oil from the very beginning of the boom. None of the oil flowing thru the DAPL is new production. That oil has always been delivered to refineries and processed. The only difference now is that it’s being transported by pipeline instead of rail cars. Rail transport that has unfortunately been proven a number of times to be much more dangerous the pipelines.
But it is a big issue for the oil buyers: pipeline transport costs much less then rail.
bobinget on Sun, 4th Jun 2017 11:21 am
The orthodoxy of organic farming (almost) made me quit farming altogether. Instead, I found ‘managed pesticide use’.
Why can’t Jews or Muslims eat pork?
(60% of American Jews and Muslims do)
Muslims once were forbidden to eat shellfish, no more. That gave me an idea.
Why can’t I use Round-Up judicially ?
So I do.
Years ago, on line, I may have one of the first to used Natural Gas term: “Bridge Fuel” as a temp replacement for crude oil. Long before shale had it’s day I kept touting NG to replace ‘Peak-Oiled’
crude.
All along I (we) kept ignoring how well a diverse US population ‘manages’.
Despite rough spots the majority of North Americans understand a mix of pork and non pork eaters give us an interesting mix of tasty, low cost chicken and pig meat.
IOW’s as natural gas begins to replace coal for electrical power who’s to say there is no place for wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, battery storage, even nuclear and ocean wave power once we work out kinks.
Cabin building orthodoxy tells us we should ONLY use materials found on or near a particular site.
Yet, yet, folks build log cabins wherever they friggin please, if they have the funds. Clearly,
factory made logs, or straw-bales, or clay rich earth, or foam blocks shipped in will cost a great deal more, short term, then conventional stick built.
This week Tesla is taking orders for PV tiles for your next roof. Why not?
Even if PV tiles reminds one of artificial siding that was supposed to look like brick or stone or wood.
(I invented aluminum siding that looks like T-1-11)
Didn’t sell.
Anonymous on Sun, 4th Jun 2017 9:38 pm
The drop in oil prices has really turned down the amount of oil we would have had now (BAkken would be 1.7 or so now) as well as cut the sands production from new projects. DAPL is taking the existing Bakken rail production. So Keystone may have missed their window.
Or really price killed that project. Obviously if $100 prices return, Keystone will be needed as Canada and ND production will explode.
rockman on Sun, 4th Jun 2017 10:42 pm
A – “So Keystone may have missed their window.” If I were to bet I would say it won’t. And the pipeline company won’t control the decision. A reminder how major pipeline projects get built: by subscription by the oil owners. There will be a “subscription window set that sets a specific period when such bids must be made. In fact, it might have already opened: the pipeline companies don’t tend to make details available. Not so much to hide it from the public but potential bidders who competed serperately with each as they negotiate with the pipeline.
And every if oil prices eventually increase there will be excess capacity as projects deplete. There may already be 500,000 bopd today. It’s impossible for a new pipeline to compete with existing pipelines that have already “paid out”. Their tariffs only have to cover ops costs: new pipelines have to charge more to recover multi $billion construction costs.