Originally Posted by Pooka

Uh... I hate to inject facts I picked up from doing this sort of work for the last 40 years, but.....

Pipelines have Eminent Domain in the US thanks to the Railroads. When the first well was drilled in Pennsylvania the first refinery was ten miles away. It was downhill from the well.

Oil was transported in Whisky barrels (which held 42 gallons) by Teamsters in large wooden wagons. To cut costs a pipeline was laid on top of the ground and oil was gravity fed to the refinery. The Teamsters tore up the pipe so it was buried.

The Railroads offered to build a tap line from the well to the refinery and transport all the oil for a large fee, so the oil people built a line up to the tracks, then loaded the oil into barrels, had the Teamsters drive it across the tracks, and then had it unloaded into the pipeline that then flowed down to the refinery.

The Railroad just put up a roadblock so everyone went to court, and the Judge ruled that pipelines had Eminent Domain so no one could ever block them again. Today they still have that right, but they have to get permission to cross any State or Federal highway. That is a matter of the project being built to standards that the governments accept.

Hopefully this will help.