Pipeline deserves scrutiny

After extensive on-site protests the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently decided against issuing the final permit to allow completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Missouri River at Lake Oahe at the northern tip of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Did these protesters have a valid concern about contamination of their water supply and lands?

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 30 -inch diameter, single-wall pipeline, 1,172 miles long, buried between two and four feet deep, which is designed to deliver oil from near Williston, North Dakota to a pipeline hub near Salem, Illinois. It will operate at 1,400 psi and transport 18,000 gallons per minute of Bakken oil. It will cross the Missouri River twice as well major tributaries the Heart, Knife, Spring, and Little Missouri Rivers. The owner is Energy Transfer Crude Oil Company, which operates 71,000 miles of pipeline in the U.S. It will be monitored and controlled from Sugarland, Texas. Leak detection will be via the “Computational Pipeline Monitoring” method.

A 2012 study for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reported that there were 1,337 “unintentional releases” in the U.S. between 2010 and 2012 – more than one a day. Another company True Cos, has suffered 36 “spills” from their pipelines in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming since 2006 totaling 320,000 gallons.

Recent spills near the Standing Rock protest include the 2015 pipeline rupture under the Yellowstone River near Glendive; the 2013 pipeline break near Tioga, North Dakota; the 2014 hazardous liquids pipeline rupture on the Berthold Indian Reservation, North Dakota, and the 2016 pipeline break near Belfield, North Dakota.

Total spill volume: 2,073,000 gallons.

Are leak detection systems reliable? At the Tioga pipeline failure a dime-sized hole in a 6-inch crude oil pipeline went undetected for 11 days and was ultimately noticed by a wheat farmer. It discharged 865,000 gallons of crude oil.

In July, 2010 a 30-inch Enbridge pipeline failed, fouling 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan with 843,000 gallons of oil. Alarms from the CPM system were ignored due to previous false alarms — a problem common in leak detection systems. There are other more effective systems such as hydrocarbon sensors, thermal imaging, etc. But their use has been resisted — apparently due to cost.

Are petroleum pipelines a concern? I think yes. About 9 million gallons of natural gas and petroleum were lost due to pipeline leaks in the U.S. between 2010 and 2016. The industry has options to improve pipeline safety and reliability but is apparently resisting to minimize cost. This in spite of the fact that the petroleum industry has the highest profitability of any U.S. industry in terms of dollar value. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the petroleum industry an infrastructure grade of D+ in 2013 due to deficiencies in pipeline condition and control systems.

The more I learn the more I realize that the protesters at Standing Rock Reservation have compelling reasons for their objections.

Charles Davis II

Columbia Falls