In the 2023 Legislative Session, lawmakers approved a proposal to invest up to $250 million in a pipeline to bring natural gas from the Bakken to areas of the state looking for that gas.
It would be a public-private partnership.
But so far, there have been no takers.
The interim Energy and Transmission Committee studied the issue. Senate Majority Leader David Hogue (R-Minot) chaired that committee. And he recently told the Legislative Management Committee there are economic barriers that have prevented the building of a pipeline.
"The people in the business of building pipelines told us that you have to have a large anchor/customer that will take that gas over a long period of time," Hogue said. "That is the demand they need in order to make an investment in a large pipeline."
Hogue said there are other barriers. He said in sparsely populated communities, the so-called “last mile” to connect those communities to the pipeline is very expensive.
"When you have these communities that are so sparsely populated, where the homes are spread out, and might be a quarter-mile apart, that's the most expensive part of the natural gas infrastructure," Hogue said. "It's just not economic on an end-user basis, to build out all that infrastructure."
Hogue said the last Legislative session passed a 15-year property tax exemption on transmission and distribution to serve communities without natural gas. He said that has helped Kindred – but other companies say that’s not enough to get them to invest in new infrastructure.
Kindred will get its natural gas from the Wahpeton Extension off the WBI pipeline.
