Dakota Access owner expects federal OK soon

The owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline said Thursday that it expects “imminent” federal approval to begin drilling under the Missouri River in North Dakota and finish one of the last sections of the pipeline that would transport crude from the Bakken shale.

Executives of Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas said during a call with analysts that the pipeline is 84 percent complete. Workers are mobilizing drilling equipment now in preparation for approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns a 500-foot buffer around the river.

There is little other construction left to do in North Dakota, although the company is still working on sections in Iowa.

Native Americans and environmentalists continue to protest the pipeline’s

construction, setting up camps around Lake Oahe, a damned reservoir on the Missouri River near the South Dakota border.

The Standing Rock Sioux reservation sits just south of the pipeline’s path; the tribe says construction runs through sacred land and burial grounds.

Tribe members also fear a spill would spoil the Missouri and contaminate their water source.

Energy Transfer said that the pipeline is 99.98 percent on private land and does not cross any land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux.

Moreover, executives said, almost all of the land is adjacent to an existing pipeline and multiple studies have found no cultural artifacts or sacred sites in the project’s path.

Energy Transfer said the pipeline will cross 90 to 150 feet below the reservoir, and have double walls and remote-control shutoff valves at each end of the lake.

The company has all other permits required to complete the pipeline, executives said; the Army Corps authorization is the sole outstanding approval.

“As soon as we have that, we are able to set up hydraulic drilling,” said Energy Transfer president Matt Ramsey.

Energy Transfer’s third quarter net income fell to $138 million from $393 million in the same period last year, the company reported, due largely to a $308 million write-down of assets in its Midcontinent Express Pipeline, which the company says is struggling. Revenues fell by $1.1 billion or 17 percent to $5.5 billion.

But company cofounder and chief executive Kelcy Warren said he was bullish on the future, especially following the upset election of Donald Trump, who has supported pipeline construction, including the Keystone XL, which would have carried crude from Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries but was rejected by the Obama administration.

“I’m stunned by the events of (Tuesday),” Warren said. “That’s not to get into politics; I just didn’t see this coming.”