North Dakota’s Bakken gas pipeline plan taking shape
Steve Hallstrom
Special to The Farmer
North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong says there may be an announcement from at least one tech giant to commit to a natural gas pipeline by the end of the year with the goal of powering a massive new data center.
Armstrong is pushing for a much-discussed energy project that would leverage the Bakken’s abundant natural gas resources to power a new wave of economic development in the rapidly expanding data center industry. In an exclusive interview with The Farmer, and AM 1090 The Flag, Armstrong outlined a vision for a west-to-east liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline, a project he believes could position North Dakota as a hub for tech-driven economic growth.
“There are a lot of different factors in this,” said Armstrong, “but the state’s portion of this is $100 million in capacity on the line. I’m pretty adamant the state shouldn’t build it and the state shouldn’t own it. But as opposed to just doing a fixed interest rate loan, what you need is a private company that builds that pipeline to have end-use contracts along the way, because they’re expensive to build and they’re time-consuming to build.”
North Dakota is already an energy transport hub. According to the North Dakota Pipeline Authority, the state had over 20,000 miles of pipelines at the end of 2024, including approximately 7,000 miles of crude oil pipelines, 9,000 miles of natural gas pipelines, and 4,000 miles of other “refined product” pipelines. The Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline operational since 2017, is among the most prominent, transporting up to 750,000 barrels of oil daily from the Bakken Formation to Illinois. Additionally, the state has seen recent developments like the Summit Carbon Solutions’ CO2 pipeline, approved in 2024, which is projected to span more than 2,500 miles across five states for carbon sequestration.
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