The company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline said Thursday the controversial project will be active and online in 83 days.
Energy Transfer Partners, the company developing the multi-state oil pipeline, believes the last reaming feet of the 1,172-mile long line will be finished and put into operation by the end of June.
Legal experts believe the pipeline’s construction is expected at this point, meaning its opponents face long odds convincing any court to halt the $3.8 billion project.
Wayne D’Angelo, an energy and environmental lawyer in Washington, D.C., told reporters the Trump administration was on “pretty solid legal ground.”
The U.S. Army approved the project Wednesday, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump signed orders expediting the so-called DAPL. His order essentially paved the way for the previously rejected pipeline to move forward.
Standing Rock Sioux filed a last-ditch legal challenge Thursday blocking the $3.8 billion line after the company constructing it won federal permission to tunnel under the Missouri River. The tribe believes the DAPL could potentially poison the group’s water supply and trample sacred ground.
“This administration (of President Donald Trump) has expressed utter and complete disregard for not only our treaty and water rights, but the environment as a whole,” the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said in a statement on its website.
It’s supporters believe the pipeline will be a safer mode of transportation for the oil than rail or trucks.
They point to recent research showing that oil leaks from pipelines are safer than those caused by train derailments and truck wrecks, namely because of a line’s safety measures.
Moving oil and gas by pipeline in Canada was 4.5 times safer between 2003-2013, than moving the same volume the same distance by rail, according to a study conducted in 2015 by the Fraser Institute, a Canada-based free market group.
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