Companies Competing For New Bakken-To-Fargo Natural Gas Pipeline -- April 18, 2025

Locator: 44836NDPIPELINE.

Updates

May 18, 2025: update, must-read.

Original Post

A reader brought this to my attention.

Links:

• Bakken Shale East, WBI
• Prairie Public Television; MSN;
  
• Intensity Infrastructure, competes with Bakken Shale East, WBI
• S&P Global;
  
  
  
  

This is how I understand it now.

Two companies are competing for an essentially identical project to move natural gas from the Bakken to the eastern border of North Dakota, both pipelines would be entirely "intrastate."

Neither project has begun moving dirt; neither company has permit approval for their projects; neither company has made a final investment decision (but I could be wrong). Both companies are in the process of getting commitments from suppliers to fill the proposed pipeline with natural gas.

MDU's WBI "Bakken Shale East"

• one project in toto
• announced in late 2024
• "open season" was to have been completed January 30, 2025
• total distance: 375 miles long
• would move 760 million cubic feet natural gas from the Bakken to eastern North Dakota

Intensity Infrastructure pipeline (with expansion, upwards of twice the size of the WBI BSE pipeline)

• one project, but in two phases
• first phase: "open season" just completed
• 136 miles: Bakken to McLean County (west-central North Dakota)
• original plan (42-inch, 1.5 Bcf/d)
• revised plan (36-inch, 1.1 Bcf/d expandable to 1.5 Bcf/d)
• second phase
• 208 miles: Mclean County to near Casselton, ND (Fargo, ND)
• "open season" announced to begin April, 2025
• total distance: 344 miles long

The reader's question: does an out-of-state midstream operator have any chance of beating MDU at this game? What's going on? Why does Intensity Infrastructure think it can beat out MDU? Again, this assumes I understand what's going on and I can certainly say I have no idea if I understand this correctly.