The story is about the frustration, irritation, patience, relationships, etc., with regard to all the pipeline that is being laid in the Bakken.
But when you get past the human interest part of the story here are the data points and quotes:
In North Dakota, 74 percent of crude oil is gathered by truck and 26 percent gathered by pipeline, according to Kringstad. For Williams County, the ratio is 95 percent truck and 5 percent pipeline.
“That’s not sustainable,” said Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources. “That’s not a paradigm that we can live with long-term.”
But the process to obtain easements for pipeline projects is taking longer and becoming more expensive, Helms said.
The price to obtain an easement used to be about $25 per rod, or 16-1/2 feet, but now the price can be as high as $135 per rod, Dukart said.
The prices have risen similarly in Williams County, with landowners typically not accepting less than $100 a rod, Jorgenson said.Five years of explosive growth in the Bakken and 95 percent of Williams County production is still "gathered" by trucks. I don't even know where to begin: there are so many story lines one could explore.
