North Dakota Pipeline Carrying One-Third Of Bakken Production Remains At Risk -- July 9, 2021

Could Judge Boasberg be assigned another North Dakota pipeline case? 

Update on the Tesoro High Plains crude oil pipeline now owned by Marathon Petroleum Corporation. 

Link to the Williston Herald.

Back to square one.

Marathon had shut the line partially down after an order from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, amid claims that the pipeline has been trespassing on Native American land for seven years. Marathon was also fined $187 million in damages in connection with that decision, which the Trump administration later reduced to $4 million. [And there's the rub. LOL.]

The Biden administration, however, reviewed the decisions and vacated all of them, amid due process concerns. They sent the matter back to the regional director, with instructions to provide a full and fair opportunity for all parties to be heard — basically, square one.

Marathon, meanwhile, filed suit against the government, accusing it of violating the Administrative Procedure Act for vacating the orders without any of the required notice, as well as violating Fifth Amendment due process rights.

No New News But More Info Regarding That Second Bakken Pipeline Ordered Shut -- August 19, 2020

Note: the pipeline was ordered shut down, but the company has appealed that decision, posted August 19, 2020. 

 From the GF Herald, from June 17, 2020, an op-ed, archived:

Tesoro High Plains Pipeline recently began sending a right-of-way and “past use” agreement to hundreds of individual landowners on the Fort Berthold Reservation. A proposed lease agreement opponents consider “wholly unacceptable.”

The pipeline’s offer attempts to remedy a seven-year-long trespass across Fort Berthold that crosses some 90 acres. The pipeline was owned by Andeavor, which was later bought by Marathon Petroleum Corp. The company first sought a lease renewal from landowners in October 2017. After repeated meetings and failed “good-faith” negotiations, landowners responded by filing lawsuits.

While landowners have been left to negotiate with Marathon, leaders of the Three Affiliated Tribes Tribal Business Council struck their own deal with the oil company in 2016. Tribal leaders did not attempt to get the same fair-market deal for tribal citizens. Mark Fox told the Bismarck Tribune in October 2018 that it was up to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not the tribe, to take care of the individual landowner.

Fox’s line of thinking runs contrary to the practice of true tribal sovereignty which calls for tribal leaders to take care of the people. Ironically, it is the individual landowners at Fort Berthold who own title to 66 acres of land compared to the tribe’s 24 acres. Yet, tribal leaders negotiated a contract and allowed the trespass to continue without seeking individual landowner input. The tribe’s contract with the oil company is tens of millions of dollars more than what is being offered to its citizens.

“Andeavor has provided an offer to landowners that is less than 1/20th what it paid the tribe for the exact same pipeline over similar land,” said attorney Keith Harper, a former US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council “We are in the process of communicating this offer to the landowners but we suspect most, if not all, will consider this offer wholly unacceptable. Importantly, we do not consider this good-faith negotiations.”

Meanwhile, after standing by idly for years, the BIA appears finally ready to issue a trespass decision. Reed Soderstrom, an attorney representing a group of Three Affiliated Tribes landowners, has requested the BIA issue a cease and desist order. As the years pass, Marathon-Tesoro pipeline operators continue to reap billions of dollars in profits while transporting oil across reservation land. The pipeline carries oil to the Marathon Petroleum Mandan Refinery in Mandan, N.D.

Mediation is being scheduled, said Reed Soderstrom, an attorney representing a group of Fort Berthold landowners. It will likely take place in August.

“This offer attempts to settle both the trespass and the future right of way,” said Soderstrom. “This offer is as follows: $9,000 bonus per acre, annual payments for the remaining 21 years of $2,000 per acre, and $19,600 per acre for trespass. Tesoro sees this offer as totaling $70,600 per acre. We think this offer is too low and advise everyone not to sign.”

More at the link.

Blackstone Group In Talks To Buy A Stake In Energy Transfer Partners, The Company Building DAPL -- December 22, 2016

This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, travel, relationship, or job-related decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here. I have not started the note yet, but generally one can expect factual or typographical errors in my notes. Facts and opinions are often interspersed and it can be difficult to separate fact from opinion.

Reuters is reporting that Blackstone Group is in talks to buy a stake in assets owned by Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the ... okay, let's hear it again ... controversial .... Dakota Access pipeline, or DAPL.

Okay, not a long note. That's all I'm going to say.

DAPL -- October 11, 2016

I'm following the DAPL story, but I won't be blogging about it until the situation is resolved one way or the other, unless something really piques my interest. But the DAPL issue sort of represents everything I can think of that "turns me off." I've moved on. And I'm going to bed.

You Don't Own Me, Lesley Gore
The movie with the following line was released earlier this year in a Blu-Ray edition: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

If Barnes and Noble did not exist, Amazon.com would have to invent it. 

SIC: Stupidity, Irony, And Clueless All Rolled Into One Photograph; "Out Of Gas" -- September 10, 2016

This photograph can be found at two entries in the new 2017 Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary of Western Slang. The two entries: "irony" and "stupidity." I am suggesting a third entry: "clueless."

This is an un-retouched photograph taken of anti-DAPL protesters just south of I-94 on their way to Standing Rock Reservation. In addition to everything else, they obviously had no concept of the large distances in North Dakota.

For those who may be unable to read the words on the cardboard "sign": "out of gas." On the window: "Oil spills. Oil kills." As if the better alternative is CBR. Clueless. From "Bill Curl's" Facebook page.

I can't make this stuff up.

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Sacred Land

There are rumors that tribal leaders are willing to "trade" their sacred land for several millions of dollars. If true, that sounds like a bribe, and in some parts of the world that's illegal.

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Flashback: 2012

Boombown Girls Life is a journey, not a destination.

Phillips 66 May Consider Bigger Stake In Bakken Pipeline -- Reuters -- January 30, 2016

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

Phillips 66 may consider increasing its 25 percent stake in Energy Transfer Partners' pipeline project to move North Dakota Bakken oil to Illinois and Texas, but likes its current commitment as is, President Tim Taylor told analysts on Friday.

This was my last entry regarding this pipeline:

January 20, 2016: North Dakota approves Dakota Access Pipeline; only Iowa is yet to approve; company expects Iowa to approve "next month." I'll believe it when I see it.

And that link led to this:

Regulators in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Illinois have already approved permits. Iowa still remains, though the company says it expects that approval to come next month.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also must approve the pipeline because it would cross beneath the Missouri River twice in North Dakota, near Williston and Mandan.

So Nebraska Iowa must still approve the pipeline as well as President Obama. I'm not holding my breath when the promoters say they hope to have this pipeline completed by the end of 2016.

A "snapshot" of this pipeline can be found here. 

In Some Places This Is Called Extortion -- July 1, 2015

It costs about one million dollars ($1 million) to lay one mile of crude oil pipeline in the Bakken.

See story at Bakken.com:

A second operator in the Bakken was granted a flaring exemption today due to a pipeline that Oneok was unable to complete due to right-of-way constraints.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission voted unanimously to “stay consistent” and allow Oxy USA to avoid penalties due to its flared gas on wells affected by Oneok’s cancelled gas pipeline project on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. In May, the commission granted a similar request from XTO Energy.

Oneok was forced to halt the proposed pipeline after it was unsuccessful in obtaining an easement from the Three Affiliated Tribes for a 1.8-mile section near Killdeer, despite Oneok’s offer to pay nearly $10 million a mile – 20 times the going rate.

“As opposed to a payment for use of the land,” Helms said, “they wanted a tariff on every mcf of gas that moved through that pipeline during the life of the pipeline, and that was just a no-go with the operators.”

Oneok’s plan B involved rerouting the pipeline across 4.8 miles of federal land but was again denied approval. It is now constructing a new gas plant in Dunn County off the reservation to handle the gas.

Though Oxy asked to avoid flaring penalties on its affected wells in Dunn County until the third quarter of 2016 when Oneok plans to have its gas plant constructed, the commission only granted relief for six months, believing that further construction within the Bakken this summer may provide other means of gas capture for the operator. The exemption only applies to wells that were in production when Oxy became aware of the cancelled pipeline in February.

The bottleneck caused by the failed pipeline project also affects Marathon, Continental Resources, ConocoPhillips (doing business in North Dakota as Burlington Resources) and Newfield Exploration.

The state’s Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms told the commission he expects to receive flaring exemption applications from these operators as well.