DES MOINES — Almost as quickly as state regulators on Thursday unanimously approved a permit for a $3.8 billion, 30-inch diameter interstate pipeline, opponents announced plans to appeal the decision to district court, saying “this is not over.”
The Bakken pipeline has been permitted by the State of Iowa.
…and no sooner than the pipeline is approved, there is a loud collision between the pipeline people and the railroads over casing the crossing(s) of the railroad(s)… (Railroads will insist the crossings be cased, the pipeliners will try to sneak another utility exemption through the statehouse)
No casing ? Even sewer and water lines need casing below both RRs and highways. To not case a high pressure oil and / or gas line seems just idiotic. Of course if the pipeline company would post a $100M perpetual bond ? ?
MC can the FRA step in on side of RRs ?
The issue from the pipeline industry’s side is cathodic protection and degradation/corrosion of the carrier pipe. (never mind with a casing, you can easilly swap out the carrier pipe and slip in a new one)
FRA is somewhat neutral right now. PHMSA is watching. There are multiple cases in the courts right now. Pipeline industry and the railroads are butting heads over this in several places.
There is an exemption from casing for certain natural gas pipelines with extra thick wall pipe buried extra deep .
Iowa passed a law, being challenged now, that railroads don’t own under their lines after a certain depth and that railroads have to virtually rubber-stamp any pipeline crossing within 14 days for a dirt cheap fee. In Iowa, utilities and pipelines are not responsible for their own lack of planning and last minute contacting of railroads and other landowners to push their lines through recklessly fast. (annoys BNSF, CN, CP and UP to no end, seems like the pipeline is under construction and the contractor is at the R/W line looking to cross before the permit application goes in)
Makes me wonder how the pipeline companies would react to a RR setting up a DC electrification over one of the pipelines…
Quite a few farmers raised concerns as about the depth of the pipeline with respect to drainage tiles. I’d also be curious about how the pipeline company would compensate for the farmers loss of productivity during the course of installation.
Excerpt from History of Iowa Utilities Board
The Iowa Board of Railroad Commissioners, one of the oldest agencies in Iowa state government, was established in 1878.
The three elected commissioners were charged with the duty to regulate railroad passenger and freight rates and operations. This oversight of the network that transported Iowans and their products was critical to pioneer farmers and businesses.
In 1911 the Iowa Legislature established the Office of Commerce Counsel, one of the nation’s first public defender’s offices, within the Railroad Commission. With the growing use of electricity, the Board was authorized to regulate the location of electric transmission lines in Iowa. A rate department was added at that time, followed by statistics and engineering departments a short time later. The agency began licensing grain warehouses in Iowa in 1921 and was authorized to regulate passenger and freight rates for intrastate motor truck transportation in 1923. Authority to regulate natural gas pipeline construction was granted in the early 1930s. Because of its expanded authority, the agency was renamed the Iowa State Commerce Commission in 1937.
After World War II ended, sentiment grew for centralized regulation of public utilities. The governing bodies of the cities and towns had jurisdiction over electric and gas rates and services. The majo
The pipeline company has been stockpiling construction materials along the route for a while. Shows how worried they were about what IUB’s decision would be.
At least once it’s built, it will release railroad cars from hauling oil so they can be used to haul grain. I didn’t know that they hauled corn (maybe creamed corn?) and beans in tank cars. But that’s what a lot of opponents (some of whom should’ve known better) of the pipeline said would be a benefit.
I’ve been neutral. Of course I would rather see oil move by rail, but I’m not opposed to the pipeline. I just hope the pipeline company doesn’t get any “economic incentives” to build it. I’m sure they will though.
Jeff
Suspect this may be the same kind of “corn” that is on the breath - a somewhat different version of ‘fluidization’. The lightest alcohol that can be sent in a ‘slug’ through a petroleum-compatible pipeline is butanol, so there is no ‘danger’ that ethanol trains are threatened by any Bakken pipeline.
That leaves the beans, which evil sarcasm might suspect of being a handy methane source if ‘conventional’ natural gas weren’t already so cheap…
More than 200 landowners who opposed the pipeline will now be subject to eminent dpmain proceedings. Hardly a good neighor start for the project. They are the ones who will be filing appeals, especially when the pipeline company tries to low ball them on price.
FRA should step up to the plate and impose minimum safety standards -railroad-protective, of course - for pipeline crossings. Why ? It does no good for the FRA Track Safety Standards to require safe track, when that could be literally undermined by a poor piepline crossing.
That Iowa law is a sitting duck for a de facto taking or inverse condemnation claim. (Almost everyplace the landowner owns “to the center of the earth” unless the mineral rights have been severed and conveyed away - common here in Pennsylvania, but not in Iowa.) I’d bring it in a Federal court under the 5th Amendment’s “no taking of property without just compensation” clause. If it apples to all the miles of railroad in the state . . . we’ll see if Iowa has enough money to pay for that.
Although regulation of utility - rail crossings are usually under the jurisdiction of a state public utilities commission or similar, here the crossing is more one of competitiors than a water, sewer, or electric line, etc. Perhaps the STB should step in as one regulator of interstate commerce - in cooperation with the PHMSA - and set some rational standards and procedures so that there’s an assured level of safety and reasonableness on all sides.
You’re asking the two sides to be rational - It’s well beyond that now (IMHO the pipeline side has gone totally spreadsheet blind and common sense stupid. They don’t really care about what happens around them.) … Then trying to condemn an easement (easement being a dirty word to railroads, they lose control & accountability accross their railroad R/W corridors) ought to be fun to watch.
“Rational” as with an uninvolved (no $ at stake) but informed referee who cares about the safety and reliability of the result, not giving too much weight* to the economy of it - i.e., a government regulatory function. (*which is Flint, Mich. situation).
The condemnation action I mentioned would the RRs vs. Iowa, not the other way around - but based on Iowa having involuntarily appropriated some of the RR’s bundle of rights in the ROW by that law (i.e., control of the underground part). Said another way, that law has already attempted the condemnation - the questions now are: Is it valid ? (needs to be as against several different legal-type tests), and: How much and how is the state going to pay for it ?
Come to think of it, major condemnations - as in killing off the RR - have to be approved by the STB. I wonder how much of a partial condemnation would be tolerated before the STB would step in - or if it will step in for any condemnation. Such as, either in space (like a parallel strip on the edge of a wide ROW), or overhead air rights, or of some of the rights of ownership, here mainly the right to exclude others from the (underground) portion of the ROW.
I have long understood that Mason jars were the preferred means of packaging corn.
Once when I was hitchhiking home from Bristol, I was picked up somewhere north of the Tennessee-North Carolina line, and when I asked the driver what work he did, he did not answer me until we reached the state line, where another car had backed in off the highway. My man backed up beside the other car, and told me to stay in my seat. After he he had opened the trunk, I felt the rear end of the car gradually rise up in several stages as something was removed. When the transfer was completed , the man told me that he had me a ride to Asheville. I do not doubt that White Lightning had been transferred from one car to the other.
Edited to correct punctuation and spelling.
For about a year now, BNSF Logistics has been involved in moving a mountain of pipe for this project to a storage area near Worthing South Dakota. The pile of pipe is as big as our local mall and its parking lot. I’d guess that put in 30 to 40 full trains of pipe.
Wouldn’t that sort of business partnership have some effect on how BNSF deals with the pipeline that crosses their lines all along the route?
[:^)]quoted from previous post by Deggesty (Johnny)
"…I have long understood that Mason jars were the preferred means of packaging corn.
Once when I was hitchhiking home from Bristol, I was picked up somewhere north of the Tennessee-North Carolina line, and when I asked the driver what work he did, he did not answer me until we reached the state line, where another car had backed in off the highway. My man backed up beside the other car, and told me to stay in my seat. After he he had opened the trunk, I felt the rear end of the car gradually rise up in several stages as something was removed. When the transfer was completed , the man told me that he had me a ride to Asheville. I do not doubt that White Lightning had been transferred from one car to the other…"
Johnny: It would seem that you and Junior Johnston have at least walked similar paths at one time. It just seems that the choice of career paths was slightly different! [:-^]
Nope (anybody notice SFPP suing UP over a former Southern Pacific Pipeline in southern CA right now.) …and the last vestigages of Elkins would frown on that anyhow.
DES MOINES — State regulators Tuesday discussed imposing penalties on a Texas oil company planning to build an interstate crude oil pipeline for beginning construction early.
Dakota Access LLC received key approvals necessary to construct a $3.8 billion pipeline from North Dakota, through South Dakota and Iowa, to a terminal in Illinois. But it hasn’t yet met certain requirements before the permit is official in Iowa.
Removing trees is done by landowners and loggers all the time and is not considered construction.