Bakken Oil pipeline plans submitted to landowners

Dallas, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners L.P. has proposed a plan to build a pipeline that would stretch from the Bakken supply area in North Dakota to Pakota, Illinois. The pipeline would cross through four states including Iowa and 17 of its counties.

Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners, said letters were sent to landowners along the potential route this week informing them of the plans. She said the letters were meant to introduce landowners to the project as well as get permission to survey the land.

“So we won’t have the final pipeline route until that is done,” she said.

Granado said she doesn’t “have a magic number” for when the surveys will be finished, but there already are “boots on the ground.”

The pipeline plans

The company, whose board approved the project in June, said in a news release that it expects to have the 30 in. diameter pipeline built and in service by the end of 2016.

Energy Transfer already has begun the process of ordering steel and negotiating construction contracts for what is being called the Bakken Pipeline.

Energy Transfer Partners does not have a state-by-state breakdown of the potential jobs the project would create, but Granado said the company is estimating a total of 8000 construction jobs in addition to permanent positions.

The Bakken Pipeline would have the capacity to transfer 320 000 bpd of crude oil, with the ability to transfer more in the future if customer demand increases, explained the company in a news release.

The company already owns 35 000 miles of natural gas and natural gas liquids pipelines.

Once the proposed pipeline reaches Illinois, it then would connect with an existing pipeline that would have access to multiple markets, including Midwest and East Coast markets by rail as well as Gulf Coast markets that would be reached through another pipeline.

Preliminary actions

Rob Hillesland, spokesman for the Iowa Utilities Board, said that Energy Transfer Partners has requested an informal meeting with the utilities board, but it has not filed any formal petitions.

To put a pipeline on private property, Energy Transfer Partners must obtain the necessary rights from the landowner through voluntary easement or eminent domain as well as provide a land restoration plan, showing how restoration laws will be met.

It also will have to hold informational meetings for the public in each of the 17 counties the pipeline could affect before a petition and review process begins.

“This is in the early stages,” Hillesland said. “It could be years.”

The route

The pipeline would run from North Dakota through Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Ames, through 17 counties to Illinois then down to Texas.

Currently, trucks or trains carry gasoline or refined oil across Iowa, but this new plan calls for an underground pipeline to transport crude oil across the state.

Oil production has been booming in North Dakota, now exceeding 1 million bpd through the use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies. Most of the oil is being shipped to refineries by railroads, but at least three new pipelines have been proposed in an effort to improve safety and reduce costs.

"As a country, we are trying to become energy-independent and look at how we can domestically produce natural gas and crude oil so we are not using foreign supplies. This pipeline route is certainly working toward that energy independence," said Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners L.P., the Dallas-based company proposing the project.

Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/11072014/bakken_oil_pipeline_plans_submitted_to_landowners/