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East Oregonian
PIPELINE: Tesoro conducts roughly 30 spill response drills annually
Continued from 1A
deal directly with federally
recognized tribes.
“Those were the begin-
ning days of the tribes
developing
government
infrastructure to take over
these rights-of-way with the
natural gas companies,” said
longtime CTUIR attorney
Dan Hester. “If there is a
problem with the pipeline,
we know who to call, and
they know who to call.”
The Tesoro line, through
the BIA, was granted a
permanent easement in
1970, Hester said. The
original six-inch line was
built in 1950, but has not
been used for the past 20
years. Another eight-inch
line was built in 1957,
running parallel to the first
line, which is what carries
petroleum products today.
Company
spokesman
Brendan Smith said spills
of any volume are unaccept-
able, and Tesoro conducts
roughly 30 spill response
drills annually across the
system.
In
North
Dakota,
protesters
have
raised
concerns over the Dakota
Access Pipeline potentially
spilling crude oil into the
Missouri River, which is
the reservation’s primary
source of drinking water.
Energy Transfer Partners is
the developer of that project,
reaching from the Bakken oil
fields into Illinois.
Dave Tovey, executive
director for the CTUIR, said
Tesoro is “very responsive”
and is out performing main-
tenance work on the line all
the time. Meanwhile, though
the tribes have inherited the
lines, he said they are now
in charge of shaping how the
companies will compensate
landowners and bolster
public safety in the event of
an emergency.
“Right or wrong, good or
bad, we want to build systems
to manage (pipelines) and
ultimately draw a benefit
off of that,” Tovey said.
“Instead of bemoaning what
happened and what should
have happened, you have
to take control and manage
it. We’ve done as well with
Saturday, November 26, 2016
UAS: Abling has presided over
100 operations since he started
Continued from 1A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A value station for the Tesoro Logistics petroleum pipeline stands in a field off
Cayuse Road east of Pendleton.
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A warning sign for the Williams natural gas pipeline
stands in the edge of a field on the Umatilla Indian
Reservation.
that as any tribe in the nation,
really.”
For years, that wasn’t
the case with the Williams
Northwest Pipeline. After the
BIA negotiated the original
right-of-way in 1955, the
CTUIR received less than
$1,000 per year for the next
40 years. The tribes later
claimed the payments were
“unconscionably low.”
Finally in 1995, the
CTUIR negotiated terms
for the next 20 years of the
Northwest Pipeline right-
of-way.
The new agreement
brought in more than
$2.6 million, with annual
contributions of $2,000 to
the Tribal Scholarship Fund
and a total of $128,961 paid
to landowners for loss of
agricultural production.
“It was at that point we
said, ‘OK, we’re going to
change how these tribal
rights-of-way are going to
work,’” Hester said.
A chunk of that payment
has also gone to the tribal
fire, police and ambulance
departments.
Pipeline
payments have helped to
expand staff, buy new equip-
ment and send officers to
regional hazardous materials
training courses, said Ray
Denny, CTUIR public safety
director.
“Our budgets are (now)
millions of dollars per year,”
Denny said.
However, any new
projects remain closely
scrutinized by the tribes. The
CTUIR was a vocal oppo-
nent of the failed Morrow
Pacific Project, which aimed
to ship 8 million tons of coal
annually down the Columbia
River where tribal members
have treaty fishing rights.
Idaho Power was also forced
to go around the reservation
to site its Boardman to
Hemingway transmission
line.
“We are much better
advocating that some rights-
of-way and utilities don’t
fit to protect our natural
resources and treaty rights,”
Sams said.
In that spirit, the CTUIR
has stood in support of the
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in
opposing the Dakota Access
Pipeline. Tribal chairman
Gary Burke wrote in an Aug.
30 letter that the project is
a threat to resources and an
insult to tribal sovereignty.
“Action that has the
potential to cause harm to
your land or water resources
should have been consid-
ered in siting the path of
the pipeline,” Burke wrote.
“We feel if your sovereign
rights are being negatively
impacted, it has similar
impact on all tribes.”
———
Contact George Plaven
at gplaven@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0825.
Oregon, recommend he apply
for the vacant range manager
position in Pendleton.
The Pendleton UAS
Range had been without a
range manager for more than
a year after the departure
of former manager John
Stevens, who became the
chief operating officer of
SOAR Oregon, an organiza-
tion that supports the state’s
three test ranges.
SOAR Oregon made up
for Stevens’ departure by
providing Pendleton with a
two-year, $300,000 grant to
hire a new manager, which
was filled when the city hired
Abling in July.
A reminder of Abling’s
Northrop Grumman days sits
on his desk at his office at
the Eastern Oregon Regional
Airport, a model of the
unmanned stealth bomber
signed by all of his former
co-workers.
It’s also a symbol of the
experience he now uses
every day for his new job,
which includes coordinating
with the Federal Aviation
Administration and acting as
the safety manager for all test
operations.
“We can’t tolerate an
accident,” he said.
Abling said testing has
come a long way since Peak
3, the Alaska-based company
that managed the range in the
past, flew a small quadcopter
in a farm field for a few
minutes.
Abling said he has
presided over 100 operations
since he started, and the UAS
test range has recently started
coordinating
unmanned
testing with standard flight
traffic at the airport.
While many of the
companies that come to
test at the airport make
staff sign a non-disclosure
agreement, Abling said
2017 is shaping up to bring
in return customers like the
Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory and new ones like
Overwatch Imaging, a sensor
company from Hood River.
A bigger fish the test range
could land comes courtesy of
Airbus, which struck a deal
with the SOAR Oregon to
begin testing its automated
air taxi concept at Tillamook,
Warm Springs and Pendleton.
Abling said the test range
is seeing a steady increase
in business because of the
easing of federal regulations
by the FAA, which gives
the range more leeway in
running operations for small
and medium-sized drones.
“Coming into the commer-
cial world ... it was extremely
difficult, just even a couple
of years ago, to operate in
the national air space,” he
said. “What the FAA’s done
when they created this range
complex is chartered us to
do the research as to how to
integrate unmanned aircraft
into the national airspace,
which is what you have to do
to have Amazon delivering
(packages), Domino’s deliv-
ering pizzas.”
Abling said the next step
would be for the FAA to start
allowing drones to fly outside
the visual line of sight of
an operator, an important
development needed for an
unmanned vehicle doing a
search-and-rescue operation
or delivering a package.
Abling said he loves
Pendleton and has no
intention of moving back to
California, where you don’t
get the same distinct seasons
that Eastern Oregon provides
its residents.
He said that the goal of
his tenure with the Pendleton
UAS Range is to make
it self-sustaining, and he
believes it’s well on its way.
The test range is currently
assembling a mobile mission
control center, which it could
lease out to drone companies
for testing.
While the test range can’t
charge companies to use
the airspace, they can lease
services like the control
center and mission support
to help the test range break
even.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
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