Dakota Access oil pipeline developer won’t consider reroute

DALLAS – The head of the company building the Dakota Access oil pipeline said Friday that it won’t be rerouted but that he’d like to meet with the head of an American Indian tribe to try to ease the tribe’s concerns about the project.

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, told the Associated Press that the company has no alternative than to stick to its plan for the $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.

Warren 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 said he’d be willing to meet with Warren but that he doesn’t think it would make a difference. “We already know what he’s going to say – that this is the cleanest, safest pipeline ever,” the chairman said.

The 1,200-mile, 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.

The matter might linger until after 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.”