Energy Transfer, Army Corps Argue DAPL Facing ‘Impossible’ Standards, Roadblocks for Future Infrastructure

The three-year-old Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which moves crude supply from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, is facing pressure that puts “impossible” standards on any infrastructure development, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and sponsor Energy Transfer LP.

The pipeline, completed in 2017 and carrying oil from the Bakken Shale of North Dakota since then, has faced an onslaught of litigation. The Standing Rock Sioux, as well as other tribes and environmental groups, have argued that if DAPL were to leak it could contaminate drinking water and sacred ancestral lands. 

The latest legal assault centers around whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a thorough review of the environmental impacts. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),...