FILE FOOTAGE:
The company owning the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe resumed a long-standing regulatory battle this week, after North Dakota’s regulators began hearings on whether Dakota Access’s owner Energy Transfer should be allowed to double the pipeline’s capacity. North Dakota Public Service Commission started hearings on Wednesday on whether to allow Energy Transfer to build pump stations in North Dakota in order to boost the pipeline capacity, and both the company and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe weighed in on the issue. The commission is expected to come to a decision at a later date. Energy Transfer, whose original Dakota Access pipeline began operations in 2017, plans to double the oil flow capacity of the pipeline to 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) from the current 570,000 bpd to meet rising production from the Bakken. Even after Dakota Access entered into service, the Bakken shale play started to see at the end of 2018 all pipelines full to capacity again, leading to hefty discounts of the oil from the Bakken compared to WTI. Energy Transfer argues that “Optimizing capacity will enable further development in the Bakken, which means more jobs and economic benefits for local communities.” The company says that so far the Dakota Access pipeline “has helped to improve the region’s drilling economics by lowering transportation costs for operators and is providing a safer means of transportation over truck or rail.” At the hearing on Wednesday, Energy Transfer officials said that the expansion does not increase the risk of an oil spill. But the Standing Rock Sioux, who had opposed the original pipeline project too, beg to differ from the company’s assessment. “Worst case” spill will be far more dangerous under proposal to double pipeline capacity,” Standing Rock Sioux said before the hearing.“The Tribe is concerned that, if approved, the DAPL capacity expansion will set the stage for yet another Energy Transfer pipeline spill, with devastating consequences for the Tribe, the environment and the citizens of North Dakota,” they argued. Nick Note: Did we not kick their native American asses starting with Columbus DISCOVERING America. YOU CAN DISCOVER A LAND OTHER PEOPLE L IVE ON IF YOU SLAUGHTER THEM IN MASS…. BECAUSE YOUR NARRATIVE IS THE ONLY ONE! After all the natives did not have the wheel, written word and were eating their daughters… I say Fuck them and their great spirit. Who could not be that great since they got their asses kicked.! Of course it was their land. Of course the white man took it from them. Its called you lost! Plenty examples of brown men and black men taking other peoples land in war. Get over it its how the world works. Besides they were not doing anything with the land except over hunting it! You don’t hear much about indigenous people complaining about pipelines in China or Russia. That’s because they can’t talk since their organs were cut out of their bodies or they were eaten in the Famous Russian sandwich at their resettlement center called the Gulag!