Follow The Oil..

 Gabriel T

gt814529

 Follow The Oil..

Sometimes the spheres of information and advertisements mix, whether it be an ad made to appear like a story in a newspaper, or even more pointed, releasing false information to misrepresent an issue, as in astroturfing.

One interesting area in this arena is a company run website, or brand journalism, such as the Richmond Standard news site that is funded by Chevron. One slight area of caution is that it was run by the company itself, so things like oil spills or environmental concerns, may not be fully covered. While it presents news, its coming from the company itself could be seen as a conflict of interest when unfavorable stories take place.

I was quite surprised to come across a similar type of site, when looking up the Dakota Access Pipeline, a highly contested piece of infrastructure that would carry oil across several states, and whose construction was met with much protest by environmentalists and indigenous tribes, ever since it was first announced in 2015.

When I searched DAPL (for short), the top search result was a site called Dakota Access Pipeline Facts. And one of the first lines read that “The pipeline is the safest and most efficient means to transport crude oil from the geographically constrained region”, which I was momentarily surprised again to read, as that seemed to be quite the flip side from everything I recall hearing about the pipeline when it was first built. I remember many months of protests, and widespread support for the prevention of the pipeline, citing that it would be built near important Native American land, and could endanger water nearby sources. So to read that it was very safe, runs counter to what I had heard.

I went to check the publisher of the website for clues, and it looks like it was from Energy Transfer, the company behind the pipeline. Upon further looking, many of the pages of the site mentioned the benefits the pipeline would bring, and (written in bold lettering) that it did not cross any Native American lands. Once again, these claims seems to be opposed to the ones of the protestors and objectors of the pipeline. It definitely seems as though the site was mentioning only the benefits the line had, and not too much of the controversy surrounding it.

There was one graph though, that did stand out. It mentioned how the DAPL line was constructed along the same path as an already existing pipeline. This makes it seem that it is not drilling into a completely new area, just extending a similar pipe line trail. Could this be taken as truthful information?

With the website’s info at hand, and the protests surrounding the pipeline, I decided to see if there were any other sites out there reporting on the line that might show an objective look at the situation.

One article I found mentioned how since the line has been built, there have only been a couple very minor leaks (at least, up until that year). With the most extensive spill coming from a different section of the line that ran past Tennessee, operated by an Energy Transfer subsidiary.

Oil Spills Graph: The Intercept, 2018

Though another article mentioned that some farmers in the area, whose land the pipe cuts across, feel that not all of the soil has returned to its previous growing state, and that the company hasn’t yet fully rebuilt or remediated the soil of which they said was part of the construction process. All while a note from Energy Transfer said that “the company is mostly done remediating Iowa land impacted by the project and working with a few farmers to fix things. The spokesperson said the company also paid farmers in advance for three to five years worth of crop loss.”

One more article I saw mentioned how the DAPL case had been taken to courts, especially over how the Energy Transfer company had yet to full disclose to the Native American cities nearby the full extensive plans and backups they had in case of leaks, which the Native Tribes said could endanger Lake Oahe, and a vital drinking water source for many. A judge even ruled in favor of pausing the pipeline and conducting another more extensive environmental review.

While the pipeline hasn’t stopped since, the review is still on and to be completed by September of 2022, this year. 

While the DAPL site above does present information about the pipeline, it does not entirely encompass the whole picture or the multiple perspectives surrounding the construction. Labeling the site as “Facts” makes it sound pretty definitive. And if this info was the first you had read about the Dakota Pipeline, as it came up first in the search results, it could be misleading. Particularly when considering the possible motives of Energy Transfer to want to put information out there about the project. It could be looking to brush aside some of the other ongoing counterpoints.