Sandpiper Pipeline Delayed

A lot of oil moves around this country, and much of it moves through pipelines. Due to the fracking boom in North Dakota and the expansion of tar sands bitumen mining in Alberta, a lot more has been moving around lately, much of it by rail or truck. All of these transport methods are problematic, but for different reasons (I'm not going to go into the horrible environmental effects of tar sands or fracking or the climate and other impacts of oil and natural gas right now, but the links above should provide a good taste, or the documentary Gasland). Trucks are inherently inefficient ways of moving that quantity of oil (or of anything), with greater risk of accidents per mile traveled and greatest carbon output per ton/mile. Rail is better on some but has other problems, including backlogs and delays as well as a history of spills and explosions. Many have said that these problems both support the expansion of pipeline infrastructure for moving an increased volume of oil.

Pipelines, however, are complicated things. They generally run in segments from a wellhead in an oil field to some kind of collection station. There oil (or bitumen, in the case of tar sands), is often blended with solvents and/or heated and sent into a larger pipeline system for transport to major distribution centers. They might cross private lands, public lands, and lands owned by the pipeline company. They also cross rivers, wetlands, roads, and anything else that happens to be in their path. As long as we have an economy driven by fossil fuels, we will have a pipeline problem. We might not need as many as we have, but all the ones we legitimately need do have to go somewhere (both need and location are important fights). Pipelines also are intrusive, requiring a substantial right-of-way, have a propensity to leak, and are not always well monitored.

So pipelines are a necessary evil, but we certainly don't need to build more of them than is economically justified and we definitely should avoid routing them in places that are environmentally sensitive. Which brings me to Sandpiper. It is a pipeline that would run roughly 300 miles across northern Minnesota from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Superior, Wisconsin. It would run relatively directly through the Lakes Country, a wetland heavy and fragile area, but would be most economical for Enbridge Energy, the oil company that wants to build it. It would also follow an existing pipeline right-of-way for about 75% of its length and the company has easement agreements for access/permission to cross private land with about 95% of the affected properties. There have been some supporters of the direct route, with its risks to the environment and cultural resources, but there have also been critics who sued the Public Utilities Commission over the process demanding that an Environmental Impact Assessment be conducted before issuing a certificate of need.

Last summer, the pipeline opponents won in the Court of Appeals, and the PUC was ordered to conduct an assessment before granting a certificate of need. This is an important development because once a certificate of need is granted it becomes much harder to stop a pipeline. It might be possible to change the route a small amount, but the builder would have a large amount of leverage. This is particularly true here, where Enbridge already had 75% of the route in right-of-way and 95% acquisition of needed easements. Acquiring the remaining 5% would have been a simple matter of exercising eminent domain to claim the right-of-way or easement (and unfortunately for the landowners, Minnesota's "Buy the Farm" law doesn't apply to pipelines, only transmission lines, so the residents and farmers would be forced to live with the pipeline and the company's right of access and perpetual maintenance). The newest PUC action has required final submission of the environmental review, which could take years (especially if it ends up in litigation). This has meant a push back in the estimated completion date for the project. It has also provided a number of new opportunities to kill the pipeline outright, kill it by atrophy of support, or re-route it into less sensitive pathways (which might also kill it). The pipeline could be deemed to great a risk to the State's environment and natural resources. It could be forced to move to a less economically favorable route. It might even lose its economic justification if the price of crude oil continues to stay low and North Dakota's oil fields go into what may be a slowdown or a prolonged slump. All of these would be ways that could stop the pipeline in its tracks, and that is a much easier thing to do before it gets its certificate of need. It does take time, effort, and energy, but it can be done if enough people put in the work. It might also buy enough time to build the political pressure to end the threat entirely.