Pipeline a boon for N. Dakota
BISMARCK, N.D. — North Dakota stands to gain more than $110 million annually in tax revenue after oil begins coursing through the Dakota Access pipeline, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.
The calculation shows the potential payoff for a state whose officials have supported the pipeline despite concerns from Native American tribes and other opponents who fear it could harm drinking water and sacred sites.
The money the state stands to make in just one year far outstrips the $33 million in costs to police a section of the pipeline that’s been the subject of intense and sometimes violent protests over the last year.
“The amount of the windfall to the state doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Payu Harris, an American Indian activist and pipeline opponent. “That’s why the state of North Dakota expended the resources they did.”
Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.8 billion pipeline will carry oil more than 1,000 miles to a shipping point in Illinois and may be moving oil as early as next week.
State budget analysts and an economic consulting firm working on the revenue forecast that lawmakers will use to create a spending plan for the next two years may take the potential tax benefits into account, State Budget Director Pam Sharp said. The new forecast will be released next week.
In addition to oil tax revenue, the pipeline is estimated to generate $55 million in property taxes annually in the four states it crosses, including more than $10 million a year in North Dakota.
The AP’s analysis calculated the more than $10 million property tax gain combined with the additional $100 million in oil taxes from higher crude prices that drillers expect to achieve once the pipeline is in place.
The pipeline was first announced in 2014, days after then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, urged that more oil and gas pipelines be built to reduce hazardous truck and oil train traffic and to curb the flaring — or burning off — of natural gas at wellheads.
Dakota Access sailed through the state’s approval process, only to run into resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation straddling the North Dakota-South Dakota border is near the pipeline’s route. The Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes fought the pipeline in court.
The opponents were dealt a devastating setback in January when President Donald Trump signed an executive order to advance the pipeline’s construction. The Army subsequently gave approval for Energy Transfer Partnrs to put the last final big chunk of pipe under a Missouri River reservoir near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.