Company Led by Donald Trump's Energy Aide Says Its Oil Will Flow Through Dakota Access Pipeline

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Continental Resourcesย โ€” the company founded and led by CEO Harold Hamm, energy adviserย toย Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and potential U.S. Secretary of Energy under a Trump presidency โ€” has announced to investors that oil it obtains via hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale basin is destined for transport through the hotly-contested Dakota Access pipeline.

The company’sย 37-pageย September 2016ย Investor Update presentationย walks investors in the publicly-traded company through various capital expenditure and profit-margin earning scenarios.ย It also features five slides on the Bakken Shale, with the fifth one named โ€œCLR Bakken Differentials Decreasing Through Increased Pipeline Capacityโ€ honing in on Dakota Access, ETCOP and how the interconnected linesย relate to Continental’s marketing plans goingย forward.

In a section of that slide titled, โ€œBakken Takeaway Capacityโ€ a bar graph points out that the opening of Dakota Access would allow more barrels of Continental’s Bakken frackedย oil to flow throughย pipelines.ย 

Dakota Access is slated to carry the fracked Bakken oilย across South Dakota, Iowa and into Patoka, Illinois. From there, it will connect to the company’sย Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline (ETCOP) line, which terminates in Nederland, Texas at the Sunoco Logistics-ownedย refinery.

From Keystoneย XL to Dakotaย Access

Previously, Harold Hamm was as an outspoken supporter of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, deploying the lobbying group he founded named theย Domestic Energy Producers Alliance to advocate for KXLย and a Bakken on-ramp which would connect to it. Once he realized the northern leg was doomed politically, Hamm began singing a different tune on Keystone.ย 

โ€œWeโ€™re supporting other pipelines out there, weโ€™re not waiting on Keystone. Nobody is,โ€ย Hamm, also an energy adviser to Mitt Romneyโ€™s 2012 presidential campaign, told Politico in November 2014. โ€œThat thing โ€ฆ needed action on it six years ago. I just think itโ€™s too late and we need to moveย on.โ€

One of those ‘other pipelines’ Hammย appears to have taken anย interestย inย is Dakota Access (DAPL). Although to date, neither Hamm nor Trump have commented publicly on the DAPL project. Continental Resourcesย told DeSmog that it does not comment on pipeline shippingย contracts.

As The Intercept’s Lee Fang pointed out in a recent article, some oil from Dakota Access could feedย exportย markets, despite Energy Transfer’s claimsย in a presentation that it will feature โ€œ100% Domestic produced crudeโ€ that โ€œsupports 100% domesticย consumption.โ€

Hamm’sย Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, as revealed in a December 2015 DeSmog investigation, led the successfulย public relations and lobbying campaign charge for lifting the crude oil exportย ban.

The battle over the fate ofย Dakota Access has pitted Native American Tribes, environmentalistsย and libertarian private property rights supporters against Energy Transfer Partners and state- and federal-level agencies which have permitted theย project.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe awaits a decision by a Judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in its lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, set for September 9.ย 

โ€œHamm is an oil profiteer exploiting the health of the water, farmland, and communities in the Dakotas and all downstream,โ€ Angie Carter of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network โ€”ย one of the over 30 groups comprising the Iowa-based Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalitionย โ€” told DeSmog. โ€œIn Iowa, we’ve called upon both Trump and Clinton to speak out against theย pipeline.โ€

Like Trump, Clinton has yet to comment on the pipeline.
ย 

โ€‹Image Credit: Continentalย Resources

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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