Judge rules Dakota Access line can stay open: Update 2

Adds Energy Transfer comments

A federal judge ruled today that Energy Transfer's 570,000 b/d Dakota Access crude pipeline (DAPL) can remain in service during a new environmental review in a long-standing legal battle over the line's permitting.

US District Court judge James Boasberg said Energy Transfer can continue to operate DAPL during the review, which is expected to be complete in March 2022.

In a 31-page opinion, Boasberg said the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes that requested the shutdown "have offered no grounds for concluding" that the vacating of a key easement last year "would put them in a different place from where they are now."

The tribes "have not carried their burden to demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable injury absent an injunction," the judge said.

The ruling is a major victory for Energy Transfer and the oil industry. A shutdown would have cut off a major conduit of crude from the Bakken shale basin in North Dakota to the US midcontinent and the Gulf coast.

Energy Transfer said today that it is pleased the court "correctly recognized" that the continued operation of DAPL "presents no risk of harm to others."

"Dakota Access has been safely operating for four years and as the events of the last few weeks have demonstrated, pipelines are the best and safest way to transport critical oil and natural gas supplies throughout the country," the company said.

Energy Transfer had cited the recent temporary shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline refined products system because of a ransomware attack to bolster its DAPL case.

The judge's ruling comes after the administration of President Joe Biden earlier this month reiterated arguments against a DAPL shutdown.

The Army Corps of Engineers said that plaintiffs in the case "have not met the applicable standard" for a shutdown, repeating an argument from a November filing, when the agency was under the administration of former president Donald Trump.

Boasberg criticized the Army Corps in the ruling today, saying the agency "had surprisingly little to say" about whether the pipeline can operate without an easement during the new environmental review, and that its response "was less than decisive."

Boasberg last year ordered the new environmental review and threw out a key easement that allows DAPL to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, and those decisions were affirmed by a federal appeals court.

Energy Transfer told the appeals court last month that it intended to ask for a Supreme Court review.

The ruling on the shutdown motion today is a loss for the Standing Rock Sioux and the other Native American groups who contend in the underlying lawsuit that the Army Corps failed to adequately study certain issues related to potential oil spills from the pipeline, which went into service in June 2017.

Jan Hasselman, who represents the tribes as part of the Earthjustice environmental law group, said DAPL "is too dangerous to operate" and should be shuttered during the new environmental review.

"The unacceptable risk of an oil spill, impacts to tribal sovereignty and harm to drinking water supply must all be examined thoroughly in the months ahead" as the Army Corps conducts its review, she said.

Boasberg ordered the parties in the case to file a joint status report by 11 June concerning potential next steps in the litigation.

DAPL moves Bakken crude to Patoka, Illinois, where it connects to another Energy Transfer pipeline to Nederland, Texas. It is the largest crude pipeline out of the Bakken shale.

The initial startup of DAPL was delayed for months in 2016 and 2017 amid large protests and regulatory delays. Since its startup in June 2017, the line has been expanded amid record-high North Dakota production prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Energy Transfer is planning to nearly double capacity on the line to 1.1mn b/d by adding pumping stations.

By Eunice Bridges