Another pipeline from the booming Bakken oil fields in North Dakota is finished and filling up with crude oil. But it still can’t keep up with growing oil production there. Mike Simonson reports.

Production at the Bakken oil fields has tripled over the past five years, and will nearly double again in the next six years. Enbridge Partners Pipeline just finished the Bakken Pipeline Expansion Project expanding an existing pipeline from North Dakota to Saskatchewan. Enbridge spokeswoman Katie Haarsagen says it’ll link with the Enbridge main pipeline and be transported back to United States refineries.

“It’ll be hugely helpful. The production coming out of western North Dakota is just amazing. We can’t keep information that we have available online for those production numbers updated fast enough.”

The new pipeline project will add 145,000 barrels per day of capacity from the Bakken and Three Forks formations in Montana, North Dakota, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Bakken produces more than 700,000 barrels per day now and is projected to produce 1.2 million barrels a day in six years.

Even with this line, Calumet Refinery Manager Dave Podratz in Superior says Bakken production is outpacing pipeline capacity.

“It’s been really hard just keeping up with the oil production coming out of North Dakota. It’s just skyrocketing. There’s multiple number of solutions. Pipelines are obviously part of it. There are an awful lot of people building rail terminals now.”

Calumet is looking at building a $20 million oil terminal in Superior to use tankers to ship oil across the Great Lakes to East Coast refineries. “People on the East Coast would love to get some of this fairly cheap Midwest/North American crude oil" says Podratz "and back out of the more expensive crude oil coming from overseas.”

In the meantime, Haarsagen says Enbridge will use rail, leaving open the possibility of building new pipelines to the East Coast. “Pipeline infrastructure is still the safest and most efficient way to deliver crude and we’ll continue to make a lot of investments.”

She says it takes three to four years to permit and build a new pipeline.

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