Bid to reopen oil pipeline near Pipestone monument prompts tribal backlash

A gas company wants to reopen a petroleum pipeline that was shut down two years ago by the federal government because it ran through the Pipestone National Monument, a site considered sacred by Minnesota tribes.

Magellan Pipeline Company has proposed routing the pipeline around the monument and contends it’s needed to ensure a reliable supply in Minnesota and the Dakotas. But tribes in the region are concerned that reviving the gas line risks damaging an area with enormous cultural significance and violates their religious freedom.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote Thursday on the route permit after more than a year of regulatory scrutiny, hearings and thousands of public comments.

Pipestone National Monument was created in 1937 to protect quarries of a brick-red stone that Native Americans have used for thousands of years to make pipes used in rituals. There are 23 tribes with a cultural affiliation to the site.

The pipestone extends beyond the park’s borders, though the potential impact of the project on that resource is hotly disputed.

“If a route can not be found that does not go through, above or below the pipestone vein and sacred sites then it should not be done,” wrote Samantha Odegard, a tribal historic preservation officer for the Upper Sioux Community, in a letter to the PUC.

The pipeline moved gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in a buried steel pipe from about 1947 until 2022, when the U.S. Department of the Interior declined to renew a right-of-way permit.

Magellan considered permanently shutting the line. But the company, backed by several trade unions, proposed a reroute instead after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided to mandate two special gasoline grades starting in 2025.

Magellan, a subsidiary of Oklahoma-based OneOk, argues the area could be hit with fuel shortages if the pipeline is not revived to provide those gasoline varieties. The shutdown of the pipeline has already restricted supply, the company says: Customers in the Sioux Falls market have seen roughly a 9-cent per gallon price increase.

The company initially proposed a $6 million reroute that would travel 1.3 miles, jogging north and west of the monument, a former reservation boarding school and a section of the Northern Tallgrass Prairie National Wildlife Refuge. Later in the process, it endorsed an $8 million, 3.4-mile alternative route that is slightly farther from the monument.

The pipeline’s proposed reroute outside of federal land has not eased tribal concerns. Many worry that drilling a new route or a spill could impact pipestone and other resources inside the park — and outside of it.

“This area itself, it’s key to our spirituality,” said Gabriel Yellowhawk, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who chairs the city of Pipestone’s Human Rights Commission. “The pipestone itself is sort of the basis of our belief system.”

Yellowhawk also wrote to the PUC, saying Magellan’s routes would interfere with religious practices. In that letter, Yellowhawk related the story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought the pipe to Lakota people and said it should be used in sacred ceremonies.

There are more than 50 intermittently used quarries in the monument, open to any member of a federally recognized tribe. The site is used for ceremonies — like the Sun Dance — along with prayer and other rituals and activities.

In a statement, Annell Morrow, a spokeswoman for OneOk, said the company is trying to ensure it doesn’t harm any pipestone, also known as catlinite. The company drilled into an outcropping and used a noninvasive geophysical survey to look for the stone along the 3.4-mile route. Magellan didn’t find any. The company will continue to “evaluate the presence of catlinite,” she said.

“If catlinite is present, Magellan expects to avoid it by using a horizontal directional drill” underneath the stone, Morrow said.

Both Magellan routes are downstream on Pipestone Creek from the monument, so any spill would flow away from it, the company said.

In July, an administrative law judge commissioned by the PUC sided with Magellan, writing that an initial review “suggests that the catlinite geological layer will not be directly impacted by either route.”

The judge, Joseph C. Meyer, found Magellan had presented “credible evidence” that the monument and pipestone resources would not be at risk from a spill. He recommended the PUC grant a permit for the 3.4-mile alternative route.

Still, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Upper Sioux Community each suggested longer routes that would be significantly farther away from the monument. Others urged the PUC to just deny the permit altogether.

Many tribes and Native leaders also accused state regulators and the judge of not taking tribal concerns seriously enough, and argued there should have been a federal environmental review.

The Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota submitted a resolution to the PUC saying they are “entrusted with being ‘Keepers of the Quarry’” and have access rights through treaty. The tribe had many objections, including that there are no studies on petroleum contamination of pipestone and said pollution in the creek or groundwater would impact the spiritual well-being of the many Native people who use the site.

Thousands of public comments submitted to the PUC reiterated the Yankton Sioux remarks. Several other tribes opposed the project on similar grounds, including the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe 11 miles west of the monument in South Dakota.

The decision for the five-member PUC comes as it has worked to improve relations with tribes after approving Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. That project was opposed by some — though not all — tribes and fiercely fought by Native activists and environmental organizations before it was built.

In 2021, the commission pushed a developer to move wind turbines farther away from the Jeffers Petroglyphs 80 miles east of Pipestone after tribal concerns, drawing praise from the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Earlier this year, the Legislature granted the PUC’s request to be added to the list of state agencies required to consult with tribes in policymaking.

In this case, Judge Meyer said Magellan’s 3.4-mile route closer to the monument “means less potential for human displacement, disruption to agricultural industries and impact on the environment.”

But Meyer also concluded the longer route proposed by the Mille Lacs band was an appropriate choice.

Yellowhawk said pipeline construction would cause an uproar in the Indigenous community comparable to the protests in the mid-2010s in North Dakota over the Dakota Access Pipeline. He urged the PUC to treat the project as if it was running through a church. “Because essentially it’s just an ideological difference,” he said. “What we consider to be a church is not four walls with a steeple.”