Oil pumped from the western counties must reach refineries a thousand miles away, and the cheapest road for it is a buried steel pipe. Pipelines thread the plains beneath the crops and the pasture, mostly out of sight, carrying crude and gas to the wider grid. Each new line, though, must be argued into existence across a patchwork of private land, public interest and tribal concern.

The Steel Beneath the Section

The negotiations are rarely simple. Landowners weigh an easement check against a permanent right-of-way across their ground; tribes raise questions of water, treaty and sacred sites; and the broader public debates the safety of the line and the wisdom of the fuel it carries. Some of these disputes have drawn national attention to the plains.

From the almanac's reckoning:

• Buried pipelines are the cheapest route for Bakken crude to distant refineries.
• Each easement is negotiated across private, public and tribal interests.
• Pipeline disputes on the plains have drawn national attention.

When the pipe is finally in the ground, the prairie closes over it and the crop grows back across the scar within a season or two. The almanac observes that the hardest part of a pipeline is seldom the digging — it is the long argument over whether to dig at all.