Dakota Pipeline Shutdown Could Constrain Crude Exports

A US district court has ruled that the largest outbound Bakken pipeline – the Dakota Access Pipeline or DAPL – shall be emptied within 30 days. If this decree remains in place, hundreds of thousands of produced barrels per day will lack an export route in 2020, Rystad Energy estimates, as alternative options such as other existing pipelines or railway transportation will not be able to fully take on the burden until next year. If we assume that DAPL is unavailable for transportation from August 2020 and that rail exports remain at 300,000…