Alternative route for pipeline ruled out

The head of the company building the Dakota Access oil pipeline says it won’t be rerouted but that he would like to meet with the head of a Native American tribe to try to ease the tribe’s concerns about the project.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Dallasbased Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), said yesterday the company had no alternative than to stick to its plan for the US$3.8 billion pipeline, which would ship oil from North Dakota to Illinois and which is nearly completed.

‘‘There’s not another way. We’re building at that location,’’ Warren said.

He said he would welcome the chance to meet with Dave Archambault, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, to address the tribe’s concerns that the pipeline skirting its reservation would endanger drinking water and cultural sites.

Archambault, who was with celebrity sympathisers who toured the tribe’s protest camp yesterday said he would be willing to meet with Warren but did not think it would make a difference.

‘‘We already know what he’s going to say – that this is the cleanest, safest pipeline ever,’’ Archambault said. ‘‘What he doesn’t know is that this is still an issue for Standing Rock and all indigenous people.’’

The 1900-kilometre, four-state pipeline is largely complete except for a section that would pump oil under Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir in southern North Dakota.

The Standing Rock tribe fears that a leak could contaminate the drinking water on its nearby reservation and says the project also threatens sacred sites, which Warren disputes.

United States President Barack Obama earlier this month raised the possibility of rerouting the pipeline.

Archambault said this would be acceptable to the tribe as long as the new route did not take it near the reservation.

Warren noted that the Dakota Access route paralleled the existing There’s not another way . We’re going to cross the river at that location. . . Northern Border Pipeline, which crosses the Dakotas as it carries natural gas from Canada and the US to the Chicago area.

‘‘We’re going to cross the river at that location,’’ he said, calling it the ‘‘least impactful’’ site.

The US Army Corps of Engineers in July granted ETP the permits needed for the crossing, but the agency decided in September that further analysis was warranted, given the tribe’s concerns.

This week the Corps called for even more study and tribal input.

ETP responded the next day by asking a judge to declare that it has the right to lay pipe under Lake Oahe. The judge isn’t likely to issue a decision until January at the earliest.

The matter might linger until after US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump, who owns stock in ETP, has said he wants to rebuild energy infrastructure.

‘‘Do I think it’s going to get easier? Of course,’’ Warren said of the incoming administration. ‘‘If you’re in the infrastructure business . . . you need consistency, and you need rules and [regulations]. And we need to follow those – everybody needs to follow them, including our own government. That’s where this process has gotten off track.’’

In the meantime, protests against the pipeline continue. About 500 people have been arrested.

Protester Kendrick Eagle, who was with the visiting actors yesterday, said he was part of a group that met with Obama when the president visited the reservation in June 2014, and that Obama promised to stand with the tribe.

‘‘Now is the time. We need him more than ever for this pipeline,’’ Eagle said.