page_title: Dakota Access Pipeline
section_title: Comparison to rail transport
hierarchical_section_title: Dakota Access Pipeline / Comparison to rail transport
caption_attribution_description: BNSF's Northern Transcon is the main rail conduit for 600,000+ bbl/d of oil from western North Dakota's Bakken oil field. B&amp;W image. Trains head south to the St. James tank farm in Louisiana, or east to refiners in Philadelphia or Liden via Norfolk Southern. B&amp;W image.
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 developer argued that the pipeline improves the overall safety to the public, would help the US to attain energy independence, and is a more reliable and safer method of transport to refineries than rail or road. Proponents have argued that the pipeline will free up railroads, which will allow farmers to ship more Midwest grain. About 70% of Bakken oil is transported by rail because of pipeline limitations.  As of July 2014, Bakken shale oil was transported through nine Iowa counties exclusively via three freight trains per week. As of June 2014,  32 trains per week carrying Bakken oil traveled through Jo Daviess County in northwestern Illinois.
  Rail offers greater flexibility and adaptability and has had fewer spill volume per Billion-Ton-Miles, but costs significantly more than pipeline transportation and, similar to pipeline, still requires additional investment.
caption: Bakken Oil being shipped by rail in Trempealeau, Wisconsin, a few feet from the Mississippi River.
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