How do you not only reduce, but eliminate, tanker trucks on North Dakota roads?
Tad True came to this summer’s North Dakota Governor’s Pipeline Summit with an answer, as well as to explain the difference between reducing and eliminating truck traffic.
True, vice president of True companies Bridger Pipeline and Belle Fourche Pipeline, says he understands trucks are fundamental to a well-functioning society, but he also knows the huge number of trucks on North Dakota roads is a contentious issue for the state’s citizens.
How to reduce truck miles
True began with telling a story, ignoring Bridger’s pipelines in Mountrail, McKenzie, Dunn, Billings, Stark and Golden Valley counties, and focusing on the recently completed Four Bears main pipeline and Four Bears gathering system.
The Four Bears pipeline starts 13 miles west of New Town and consists of 77 miles of 12-inch, epoxy-coated steel pipe running south-southeast to within 12 miles of Belfield.
True said they receive oil through two truck terminals at Keene and Killdeer, as well as through multiple gathering systems.
From Belfield the oil continues through pipelines to two different delivery points, one into the Butte Pipe Line near Baker, Mont., and the other at the Bakken Oil Express Rail Terminal at Dickinson.
The overall capacity of Four Bears is determined by what it can deliver.
The Butte Pipeline has a capacity of 80,000 barrels per day and the Bakken Oil Express a capacity of 25,000 bpd, so the overall capacity of Four Bears is approximately 115,000 bpd.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of Four Bears at reducing truck traffic, True compared the logistics of transporting crude oil via tanker truck to moving it through the pipeline.
In the absence of a pipeline, True said, the only way to transport the crude from a well in northern McKenzie county to a terminal near Belfield is to put the crude in tanker trucks which typically have a capacity of 220 barrels.
A truck loading within 15 miles of Keene would travel south to Belfield to get the oil to market, then return to the well to start the process all over again. He said this example would result in a total roundtrip distance of 232 miles.
But with the Four Bears pipeline, a truck would only have to travel a total roundtrip of 30 miles to get the oil from the well to the terminal at Keene, eliminating approximately 200 miles from the length of the truck haul for the same 220 barrels.
True then estimated that based on a savings of 200 miles per truck haul from the Keene area, and a savings of 108 miles from the Killdeer area, Four Bears is presently eliminating more than 50,000 truck miles per day from state Route 22 and U.S. Route 85.
He also mentioned several anticipated expansions in the Bakken region that will allow Four Bears to further reduce the number of truck miles, including: a pipeline from Baker, Mont., to Guernsey, Wyo.; completion of on-ramp to the Keystone XL pipeline; and an expansion to the Bakken Oil Express rail facility.
He said when these expansions are complete and Four Bears was running at full capacity, the pipeline should eliminate more than 75,000 tanker truck miles per day from North Dakota roads, translating into a 25 million truck-miles-per-year reduction.
But True emphasized that while the Four Bears reduces the number of haul miles, in the absence of a gathering system, it does not eliminate tanker trucks from the road.
How to eliminate trucks carrying oil
True explained that in order to get one well into production approximately 2,000 to 2,200 truckloads are needed to the well site in the first year for everything from rig components and water tanks coming to the site, to crude oil leaving the site.
Of that estimated 2,000 to 2,200 truckloads in the first year of operation, True said 37 percent would be for transporting crude oil out.
Extending that first year out over a 15-year life span of a well, “all of a sudden that becomes 72 percent of the trucks required to service a single well are crude oil trucks.”
He said from a pipeline standpoint, these are the trucks that can be eliminated by a gathering system.
As an example, True pointed to a gathering lateral near the Keene terminal consisting of one mile of six-inch pipeline connecting two spacing units.
Over the first 15 years of operation True said, this lateral will eliminate 23,000 truckloads. More importantly, he said, during the first month of operation beginning last January the lateral resulted in eliminating nine truck loads per day with just one mile of pipe.
In a second example, True pointed to a larger gathering lateral in northern McKenzie county consisting of 32 spacing units connected by 24 miles of 4-inch, 6-inch and 8-inch pipe that were scheduled to go into service during week of June 18.
Over the first 15 years of this gathering lateral, True said the system would eliminate 350,000 tanker truckloads. To put this in perspective, he said all of the trucks travel on the same township road, so for someone with a house on a county road, 60 trucks a day would be eliminated.
Shameless advertising
True warned he would end his talk with a “shameless advertisement for the pipeline industry,” and showed a slide of a driver’s view through the windshield of an automobile looking at the back of a tanker truck with a “LONG LOAD” banner.
He said everyone has seen this type of situation where the truck is attempting to make a left-hand turn at an uncontrolled intersection onto a busy highway.
The question you have to ask yourself “after about 40 minutes of sitting there” is “got pipelines?”
Founded in 1948, the True companies are based in Casper, Wyo.
