Building oil and gas pipelines can be a deadly business
The rural plains of North Dakota are lonely and unforgiving. This is the flattened, semi-industrial part of the state, where the infrastructure of oil production—oil and natural gas holding tanks connected to pipelines and nearby pump jacks – is omnipresent.
One project is the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Construction of the 1,200-mile pipeline began in May of 2016, taking place simultaneously on three sections. It is designed to carry 570,000 barrels of oil a day, more than any other pipeline ever built in North Dakota. It originates in the upper northwest corner of the state, passes through South Dakota, then Iowa, and ends near Patoka, Illinois, where it connects to the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline (ETCO), which carries the oil onward to Texas and, if completed, via the Bayou Bridge Pipeline to Louisiana. From these Gulf Coast ports, much of the oil will hitch a tanker ride to distant markets overseas, either as crude or after being refined into other products, such as gasoline or ethylene, a petrochemical that is used to make plastics.