Pipelines best option to move oil — but best isn't good

The Dakota Access pipeline approval has been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under orders from President Trump. It was halted after thousands of environmentalists helped regional Native American activists contest its construction through their ancestral territory.Earlier, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline that would have transported Alberta Oil Sands petroleum was also stopped by regulators in the Obama Administration.According to the National Transportation Safety Board, pipelines are the safest means to get petroleum products from point A to point B. They say that there are 171,000 miles of oil and 299,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines in the U.S.However, hundreds of recent pipeline failures in the U.S. and Canada provide vivid evidence that thin-walled, faulty-welded, poorly designed, decaying cast iron pipelines pose dangerous threats to our soil, water and wildlife.Freeze/thaw cycles, water line leaks, soil settlement, nearby construction projects and soil erosion are leading causes of spills.Examples of pipeline failures are too overwhelming to list, but monumental oil spills include 840,000 gallons spilled into the Kalamazoo River in 2010 and 865,000 gallons in Tioga, North Dakota in 2013.A Dec. 5, 2016 pipeline in Belle Fourche, N.D., near the proposed Dakota Access pipeline battleground that leaked 176,400 gallons of crude oil, polluting at least five miles of Ash Coulee Creek, a tributary of the Little Missouri River is still burning.These spills underscore the need for rigorous pipeline inspection, maintenance and timely replacement. While new pipelines are reasonably safe, about half are more than 50 years-old, and, like most of our nation's other infrastructure, way overdue for replacement.Furthermore, the Bakken shale and Alberta Oil Sands oil are more corrosive than other sources of crude and invite much higher risks of pipeline failure. Older lines are not protected by protective internal coatings used in new lines.The solvents used to transport them are highly combustible, making transport by rail even riskier. There have already been multiple railcar explosions in North Dakota. Another killed dozens of citizens in Lac Magantic, Quebec and polluted the Chaudière River.Rail lines became so full of oil tanker cars that major traffic jams occurred in the Dakotas, disrupting other uses of these transportation routes. Shipments of corn from North Dakota grain elevators were delayed by rail capacity until oil prices softened, production slowed and more railway lines added.One side effect of shipping oil by rail that directly affected sportsmen was the 2014 elimination of the formerly popular Amtrak Perch Express that took ice fishermen to Devils Lake, North Dakota to catch their huge Yellow perch.However, long, frustrating delays frequently occurred because of competition for passenger rail space with long freight trains of oil tankers, disrupting the timing of the chartered fishing trip itinerary.Why is the crude oil being moved thousands of miles in the first place? Wouldn't it be more environmentally favorable to build mini-refineries closer to drilling areas and then send the finished products to population centers that need it?My suspicion is that much of the oil that goes to the Gulf Coast will enter the world market. After a 40-year ban on crude oil exports, oil is allowed to be shipped to other nations again, buoying the world supply.So, what happened to the promise that domestically-produced oil would be used here to replace demand for oil imports? We still import almost one-half of the oil used here, so why ship any away?As domestic demand for oil slips, because of vehicles getting better mileage, conservative driving habits, heating oil furnaces being switched to natural gas and the use of corn ethanol, what's the rush use it up faster? Why not let domestic fuel consumption set the pace of extraction so that it lasts longer for us?If petroleum products are going to be transported through pipelines, the least the industry could do is to inspect them all to insure their structural integrity and adequately monitor them to quickly detect leaks.Fracking already wastes billions of gallons of water to force the oil to the surface. It is inexcusable to ruin even more surface water with spills as a result of companies trying to squeeze more years out of aging pipelines.It is unlikely that Congress will pass any new regulations that would set a timetable for mandatory pipeline replacement or that the industry will do more voluntarily. A NEXUS pipeline may soon be pushing natural gas through our counties.