Dakota Access Pipeline: Inconvenient Facts

North Dakota Congressman and former member of the North Dakota Public Service Commission (2003-12) has written a piece in the WSJ, What the Dakota Access Pipeline is Really All About.

He presents the following inconvenient facts:

* The pipeline does not cross any land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux

* Two federal courts have rejected claims that the tribe wasn’t consulted

* Other tribes and parties did participate in the process

* Years before the pipeline was announced, the tribe was working with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps to relocate its drinking-water intake. The new site sits roughly 70 miles downstream of where the pipeline is slated to cross the Missouri River. Notably, the new intake, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, will be 1.6 miles downstream of an elevated railroad bridge that carries tanker cars carrying crude oil.

* Other pipelines carrying oil, gas and refined products already cross the Missouri River at least a dozen times upstream of the tribe’s intake. The corridor where the Dakota Access Pipeline will run is directly adjacent to another pipeline, which carries natural gas under the riverbed, as well as an overhead electric transmission line. This site was chosen because it is largely a brownfield area that was disturbed long ago by previous infrastructure.

* This isn’t about the climate. The oil that will be shipped through the pipeline is already being produced. But right now it is transported in more carbon-intensive ways, such as by railroad or long-haul tanker truck. So trying to thwart the pipeline to reduce greenhouse gas could have the opposite effect.