Oil Pipeline Transport

This is weird. Pipelines are the cheapest, most efficient, and safest way to move large amounts of oil. How is something which renders oil impossible to transport via pipeline a step forward?

You'd likely send via pipelines or tanker trucks instead.

There is a little bit more to an oil tank than just steel walls. You need proper foundations, fire prevention systems, disaster plans, probably get hooked up to the pipeline network, etc etc etc. Even if it were quick, the amount of oil being pumped up is massive and you need more than a few tanks to store it all. Finally, tanks are long term infrastructure and it might not be profitable to build out storage too much just in the hope of catching once-in-a-lifetime negative pricing events.

Armchair take: The pipelines handle a lot of fuel, and the US needs / uses a lot of fuel; to move the same amount, you need a lot of trucks. And if that need is not met, the economy etc will be disrupted heavily, price of fuel will go up, and the price of fuel going up has caused massive issues in the past.

Some perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_...I'm not sure why this appears to be interesti

Isn't the point of the pipeline to send the oil to Gulf Coast refineries? There's not that many direct uses for dirty Bakken crude, which also happens to be particularly dangerous to ship by train.

Like others have said, this oil would probably be run to refineries by train. This is inefficient, but until new pipelines are built, it's the best way to get oil from the field to the refinery.

why can't they use a fraction of the flaring gas to liquify the rest of the flaring gas? then the liquid gas can be transported just like the oil barrels to the pipeline-connected world

Oil doesn't really have an alternative right now for many of its applications. Plus, at the beginning of the pandemic gas was dirt cheap, yet no one needed it. However, this discussion was about transportation of oil, and the idea is that pipelines are more efficient than rail or trucks (if that even makes sense), so it's a pity the decision to halt the project is more political than even environmental.

That'll just cause the oil to be transported over rail instead, which is more expensive and has an even higher chance of spills.