The company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is bleeding tens of millions of dollars, according to a lawyer representing the pipeline.
The $3.8 billion DAPL is losing $20 million every day the project is delayed, David Debold, an attorney representing Dakota Access, told District Court for the Districtof Columbia’s Judge James Boasberg Friday.
He asserted that the “final decision on the right-of-way was made on July 25,” and requested Boasberg expedite final approval of the project, essentially overturning the Army Corps of Engineers’ Dec. 4 rejection of the pipeline.
Energy Transfer Partners, the company developing the pipeline, wants the court to acknowledge that the Army Corps took all necessary action to grant the company the easement in July, rendering moot any further need for easement approvals.
The rejected easement would have allowed DAPL to continue under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and activists have gathered to protest a pipeline they think risks poisoning the tribe’s water supply.
Boasberg started the court’s review by setting a briefing schedule that will hear from ETP and its claim that the Army Corps should have granted the easement. The review is expected to be completed in February.
Dakota Access will bleed more than $1 billion in lost profit by the time the review process is wrapped up if Debold’s estimate is extrapolated over a three-month period
The fate of the nearly 1,200-mile-long line, which is expected to bring 470,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil per day from western North Dakota to southern Illinois, will almost certainly fall into the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.
“I will tell you, when I get to office, if it’s not solved, I’ll have it solved very quickly,” Trump, who once invested $1 million into the project, told Fox News’s Chris Wallace Sunday. The former reality TV star is generally in favor of updating the country’s infrastructure, including more oil pipelines.
The project, once completed, will create up to 12,000 construction jobs and provide millions in state and local revenues during the construction phase, and an estimated $129 million annually in property and income taxes, according to the Army Corps.
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