two U.S. Bureau of Land ….
two U.S. Bureau of Land Management representatives. Because the pipeline would cross more than 50 miles of BLM land, the federal agency is a major player in the planning process.
“I want to know about worst-case scenarios,” Dupree told agency leaders.
The pipeline would run near several water systems that treat and deliver water from the Missouri River to thousands of Native and non-Native people on the reservation and in surrounding counties. It would also cross the Poplar River, a tributary of the Missouri.
What would happen, Dupree wanted to know, if it were to spill?
In 2015, a di_erent pipeline owned by Bridger spilled at least 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil into the Yellowstone River. About 6,000 Glendive residents, whose water treatment plant was downstream of the spill, were directed not to consume drinking water at the time. Bridger ultimately settled a civil lawsuit with the Montana Attorney General’s Oce over the spill for $2 million in 2021. According to data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Bridger pipelines have spilled 12 times since 2012. In 2023, Bridger and pipeline company Belle Fourche agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty under the federal Clean Water Act and pipeline safety laws following oil spills in Montana and North Dakota.
Slavin told MTFP the company has improved its safety protocols since the 2015 spill.
“We build the pipelines today better than they were built in the past,” he said. “They are designed for safety and 24/7 monitoring with multiple leak detection systems, including one that we invented using AI.”
In the same September meeting, tribal leaders asked BLM representatives if the agency’s environmental analysis will consider the lifetime emissions produced by processing and burning tar sands oil.
The refining and burning of fossil fuels releases planet- warming emissions. Refi ning tar sands oil generates 20% higher greenhouse emissions than the average gallon of fuel from other types of oil produced in North America. Tar sands oil requires large amounts of water and gas for heating and mining to extract the bitumen.
Phillip Blundell, the pipeline project lead for the BLM, cited a recent Supreme Court decision that federal agencies are not required to analyze such environmental impacts. He told tribal leaders that the BLM’s environmental analysis “will only look at emissions from construction.”
Council members also asked what an emergency response would look like in the event of a spill. They wanted to know how to document potential harm to the tribes’ natural resources and asked if there are plans to mitigate possible violence at man camps.
BLM representatives provided council members with little in the way of specifics, repeating several times that Bridger’s delay in providing logistical information about the pipeline has stalled the agency’s progress on its environmental analysis.
Dupree said he left the council meeting with more questions than answers.
“We met with the BLM twice and Bridger Pipeline twice in the last year and a half, but you know, the same questions come about with no answers,” he said. “It’s just a lot of lip service, it seems.”
Asked about plans to meet with the tribal council, Bridger spokesperson Salvin said the company is preparing technical assessments to address the tribes’ questions and plans to meet in December.
Dupree told MTFP that, as of late September, he was unaware of any scheduled meeting.
