A North Dakota federal court ordered Native American protesters Wednesday to stop blocking the construction of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline set to cross four states and major rivers, a Sioux official said.
The so-called Bakken pipeline, a line about as long as the proposed Keystone XL, is set to cut through the Dakotas, Iowa, and Illinois diagonally. Owned by a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, every day the line will transport up to 570,000 barrels of sweet crude oil fracked from North Dakota’s oil-rich Bakken Formation, to a market hub near Patoka, Illinois.
Most of the affected land is private farmland, but the project does run through wildlife areas and sacred Native American sites, as well as major drinking water sources like the Mississippi, and the Missouri, the longest river in North America.
— source thinkprogress.org