Another Major Bakken Pipeline Forced To Halt Operations

The high-profile case of the Dakota Access oil pipeline ordered shut earlier this month has overshadowed another legal dispute over a smaller pipeline carrying crude out of the Bakken shale basin in North Dakota, which was also ordered shut, potentially stalling a recovery in the Bakken. The Tesoro High Plains Pipeline was also ordered shut in early July, after 67 years of operations, by the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs for trespassing on land owned by Native Americans. The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs preempted a mediation meeting set for August and served a formal notification of trespass to Tesoro officials, Jodi Rave, who owns undivided interest in two tracts of land on which Tesoro runs its pipeline, wrote in Grand Forks Herald earlier this month. The right-of-way for the Tesoro High Plains to cross 90 acres of the Fort Berthold Reservation was first initiated in 1953 and was renewed every 20 years, in 1973 and in 1993, court documents reviewed by Bloomberg show. But in 2013, the then owner of the pipeline, Andeavor, acquired by Marathon Petroleum in 2018, failed to secure the right of way for the pipeline. The Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered Marathon Petroleum to pay US$187 million in trespass damages and gave the company 30 days to appeal the decision...MORE