page_title: Dakota Access Pipeline
section_title: Route
hierarchical_section_title: Dakota Access Pipeline / Route
caption_attribution_description: The controversial DAPL progressing across Southern Story and Northern Polk Counties in Central Iowa.
context_page_description: The Dakota Access Pipeline or Bakken pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long underground oil pipeline in the United States. It begins in the shale oil fields of the Bakken formation in northwest North Dakota and continues through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil terminal near Patoka, Illinois. Together with the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline from Patoka to Nederland, Texas, it forms the Bakken system.
  The $3.78 billion project was announced to the public in June 2014, and informational hearings for landowners took place between August 2014 and January 2015. Dakota Access, LLC, controlled by Energy Transfer Partners, started constructing the pipeline in June 2016. Phillips 66, and affiliates of Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum have minority interests in the pipeline. The pipeline was completed by April 2017 and its first oil was delivered on May 14, 2017. The pipeline became commercially operational on June 1, 2017.
  Protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline occurred at several places because of concerns about the pipeline's impact on the environment and to sites sacred to Native Americans. Indigenous nations around the country opposed the pipeline, along with the Sioux tribal nations.
context_section_description: The pipeline route runs from the northwestern North Dakota Bakken and Three Forks sites. It starts in Stanley, North Dakota, and travels in a southeastward direction to end at the oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois. It crosses 50 counties in four states.
  In North Dakota, the 346-mile (557 km) route traverses seven counties. The project consists of 143 miles (230 km) of oil-gathering pipelines and 200 miles (322 km) of larger transmission pipeline. The route starts with a terminal in the Stanley area and runs west with five more terminals in Ramberg Station, Epping, Trenton, Watford City and Johnsons Corner before becoming a transmission line going through Williston, the Watford City area, south of Bismarck, and crossing the Missouri River again north of Cannon Ball. It also includes six tank farm locations and one electric pump station.
  In the early stages of route planning, it was proposed laying the pipeline 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bismarck, North Dakota. The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) evaluated alternative routes as part of compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, including one alternative route north of Bismarck, North Dakota. This alternative was determined not to be a viable alternative because of multiple factors, including that it was not co-located with other infrastructure, the route's impacts to wellhead water resources, constraints on the route from the North Dakota Public Service Commission's 500-foot residential buffer requirement and the route's additional impacts to areas identified as High Consequence areas under Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regulations. The Bismarck route was rejected by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) before submitting a request to the North Dakota Public Service Commission (NDPSC) for a permit. This decision was described by some activists like Jesse Jackson as environmental racism. The change of the route put the pipeline into the existing pipeline corridor parallel to the already existing Northern Border Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline built in 1982. The Dakota Access pipeline selected a "nearly identical route" and planned to cross the Missouri River near the same point. The plans called for the pipeline to be directionally bored so that it would not come in contact with the Missouri River. It is planned to be "as deep as 90 feet (27.4 m)" below the riverbed.
  In South Dakota, the pipeline travels 274 miles (441 km) through 12 counties: Campbell, McPherson, Edmunds, Faulk and Spink. The system includes one electric pump station.
  In Iowa, the pipeline extends about 347 miles (558 km) diagonally through 18 Iowa counties: Lyon, Sioux, O'Brien, Cherokee, Buena Vista Sac, Calhoun, Webster, Boone, Story (which will have a pumping station), Polk, Jasper, Mahaska Keokuk, Wapello, Jefferson, Van Buren, and Lee. The system includes one electric pump station.
  In Illinois, the 177-mile (285 km) route traverses 12 counties.
caption: Dakota Access Pipeline being built in central Iowa
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