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Standing Rock seeks hearing to deny DAPL bid to double oil flow



Construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, shown here near its Missouri River crossing in 2016, “imperils tribal welfare, and the DAPL capacity expansion will dramatically exacerbate that peril,” the tribe submitted to the North Dakota Public Service Commission. (Photo by Talli Nauman)

LINTON, N. D. – In submissions for a hearing Nov. 13, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asked the North Dakota Public Service Commission to deny Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) operators’ request to double the flow pressure in the fracked oil conduit.
“Doubling the throughput of a pipeline that already poses a grave threat to the water the tribe drinks, the sacred sites where tribal members pray, and the hunting, fishing, and plant gathering practices that are integral to the tribe’s way of life would have a profoundly adverse impact on tribal members,” Standing Rock said in a brief.
The pipeline company seeks permission to double its capacity to 1.1 million barrels a day by adding five 6,000-horsepower electric-motor pumps at its station five miles west of this town in Emmons County, just across the Missouri River from the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.
“A few miles upstream from the Emmons County pump station is the DAPL crossing at
Lake Oahe. The waters of Lake Oahe are critical to the welfare of tribal members,” the tribe said. “The DAPL Oahe crossing imperils tribal welfare, and the DAPL capacity expansion will dramatically exacerbate that peril,” it said.
Applicants, who transport oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Formation to Illinois, state that the capacity expansion “will not alter the existing maximum operating pressure of the DAPL,” or Dakota Access Pipeline.
However, surges, or changes in pressure, commonplace on hazardous liquid transmission lines such as this, can cause them to burst, and the company has provided no surge analysis in its application, the tribe’s engineering consultant Richard Kuprewicz warned.
DAPL capacity expansion would result in actual flow velocities within the 30-inch mainline pipe in excess of 15 feet per second. “This is an extremely high velocity for crude oil, especially for a large diameter pipeline such as DAPL,” Kuprewicz testified.
Such high velocities can rapidly cause prohibited surge overpressures of more than 110 percent of maximum operating pressure within microseconds, he noted.
Another tribal witness, pipeline safety expert Donald Holmstrom, pointed out that Dakota Access
corporate parent, Energy Transfer LP, has the worst hazardous liquid safety record in the industry over the past 13 years.
In recent months, its pipelines have caused a number of high-profile release incidents, prompting unprecedented government enforcement actions, shutdowns and remedial actions, according to Holmstrom.
As of Dec. 3, 2018, DAPL had experienced 12 spills of more than 6,100 gallons of Bakken crude oil in its less than two years of operation. But that is just a small fraction of the many hazardous liquid incidents across Energy Transfer LP’s pipeline portfolio, he noted.
According to a database maintained by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, from 2006 to 2018, Energy Transfer pipelines suffered 458 hazardous liquid incidents, resulting in nearly $110 million in property damage from more than 2.5 million gallons spilled, “making Energy Transfer far and away the most hazardous pipeline operator across that 13-year period,” he said.
The second most hazardous pipeline operator over that period experienced 45 percent fewer liquid spills than Energy Transfer, according to his research.
Since DAPL went into operation in 2017, Energy Transfer LP company-wide hazardous
liquid spills have resulted in more than $20.5 million in property damage, prompting “unprecedented regulatory enforcement action,” he added.
In 2017-2018, Sunoco, controlled by Energy Transfer LP, was forced to suspend pipeline operations because of environmental contamination on four separate occasions across three states, with one state regulator describing its practices as “egregious and willful” violations of law.
“The tribe respectfully submits that the commission should be alarmed that the industry’s
most hazardous operator is now seeking to double the already-substantial capacity of DAPL and increase the risk of spill incidents – without providing critical documents and data,” Standing Rock said.
Throughout history and into modern times, the tribe has been forced to surrender its land and its way of life to the interests of others. The siting of DAPL, and now, the DAPL capacity expansion, threatens to write another chapter in that sorrowful history.”
Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Jon Eagle bolstered the case for nixing the project on the grounds that it increases hardship and uncertainly for all Emmons County residents but especially for the native population because of past injustices.
“The flooding of the (Missouri) river to create the hydroelectric dams had an adverse effect on a traditional cultural landscape that caused a deep unresolved trauma to the people who witnessed the original beauty of the river and the subsequent destruction of a way of life,” Eagle said.
“That federal action also created a disconnect between the people of Standing Rock and their neighbors on the east side of the river. The people of Standing Rock at one time had a great relationship with their neighbors.
“I grew up listening to stories of my dad and his brothers breaking horses for area ranchers who in turn bought them school clothes and shoes in the fall. My mother-in-law told stories of traveling to Linton to attend polka dances.
“Our elders told stories of gatherings on the river bottom to share harvest, to exchange and trade goods with one another. Those are stories that my generation never got to experience because we were born after the flooding of the river.
“Once man changes the land,” it is changed forever,” he said. “I have personally been to five countries and 48 of our states. I have seen such beauty in my lifetime that only a poet could give word to the experience. As I look around at the beauty that is the Dakotas, I think to myself, do we really want to risk this?
“Do we really want to support the expansion of this pipeline and risk what we have left? Because the company itself isn’t from here, they don’t have the same connection to this land that those of us who were born and raised in the Dakotas have. They’re willing to take that risk, but are we?”
The tribe opposed the original construction of DAPL, drawing unprecedented massive native and worldwide grassroots support. It continues to pursue that case in litigation against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Dakota Access in Washington, D.C.

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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