Dakota Access to start up in May

The Dakota Access pipeline is to come on stream on May 14, international media reported on Thursday.

The 1,897-kilometre pipeline project, which is to carry some 830,000 bopd from Canada to the US across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, has been targeted by sabotage by environmental activists and protests by Native American tribes, who say it threatens their water supply and sacred sites.

In March, Norwegian bank DNB and Dutch banking group ING withdrew their financing for the project following negotiations with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The two entities had expressed concerns over the level of conflict and indigenous peoples’ rights.

Late last year, construction of the last unfinished sections of the pipeline, whose price tag is at some USD 3.8 billion, was halted after the administration of former US President Barack Obama withdrew a key permit for the crossing under the Missouri River. Soon after taking office in January, President Donald Trump reversed the decision.

Proponents of the project say it will bring jobs and save money.

“We need a lot more infrastructure,” Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, told Fox News in a recent interview. “The second-largest oil field in the United States is moving by rail. Come on, we’ve advanced past that.”