Dakota Access Oil Pipeline Developer Won't Reroute

The head of the company building the Dakota Access oil pipeline said Friday that it won’t be rerouted but that he’d like to meet with the head of an American Indian tribe to try to ease the tribe’s concerns about the project. 

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, told The Associated Press that the company has no alternative than to stick to its plan for the $3.8 billion pipeline, which would ship oil from North Dakota to Illinois and which is nearly completed. 

“There’s not another way. We’re building at that location,” Warren said. 

Warren said he would welcome the chance to meet with Dave Archambault, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, to address the tribe’s concerns that the pipeline skirting its reservation would endanger drinking water and cultural sites. 

“We already know what he’s going to say - that this is the cleanest, safest pipeline ever,” the chairman said. “What he doesn’t know is that this is still an issue for Standing Rock and all indigenous people.” 

The 1,200-mile, four-state pipeline is largely complete except for a section that would pump oil under Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir in southern North Dakota. The Standing Rock tribe fears that a leak could contaminate the drinking water on its nearby reservation and says the project also threatens sacred sites, which Warren disputes. 

President Barack Obama earlier this month raised the possibility of rerouting the pipeline, and Archambault has told the AP that would be acceptable to the tribe as long as the new route wouldn’t take it near the reservation. 

Warren noted that the Dakota Access route parallels the existing Northern Border Pipeline, which crosses the Dakotas as it carries natural gas from Canada and the U.S. to the Chicago area. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.