Piñon pipeline dead; company withdraws application
WINDOW ROCK
The Piñon pipeline is dead.
In a current political climate of activism against pipelines, the project went out with more of a whimper than a bang as the company quietly stepped away from the table.
With movements against pipelines including the NoDAPL spearheaded by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and Native American and indigenous allies from all over the United States and throughout the world in North Dakota, officials pointed to oil prices as the cause of the local pipeline’s demise.
According to a press release from the Bureau of Land Management, the BLM Farmington Field Office recently received a withdrawal letter for the right-of-way application for the project known as the Piñon pipeline – officially the Piñon Gathering System project.
According to spokespersons from BLM and the Colorado-based Saddle Butte San Juan, LLC, the project was no longer economically viable after a drop in oil prices since the company first applied for a right-of-way that would run through multiple chapters on the Navajo Nation and the San Juan River Basin.
“The Piñon Gathering system has been inactive for more than a year due to the decline in crude oil prices which means that the project is simply not viable,” a spokesperson for the company said.
“This situation is unchanged and as a result we have withdrawn our ROW application to the BLM. We are disappointed because we believe the project provides a safe and environmentally responsible opportunity to remove a significant amount of oil tanker traffic from roadways in Northwest New Mexico and bring economic growth to the area.”
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