Even Protesters Need Fossil Fuels Transported By Pipeline

How much of the recent Dakota Access Pipeline protest taking place in North Dakota has been fueled by oil or petroleum byproducts?

Quite a bit actually.

In a recent Bloomberg post, Ethan Bellamy, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Denver said, “Unless those protesters drove electric cars to the construction site, or those celebrities rode horses from Hollywood to North Dakota, I’d ask them how else they’d like to move goods, services and people around the world.”

Not only when it comes to transportation does this protest require the use of fossil fuels, but many of the products being used at the protest site, from plastic bags, to tarps and tents, to medicine, and even to the PVC pipe used to chain a protester to an excavator. All of those products are made using fossil fuel byproducts created through the refining process.

Protest+DAPL

A North Dakota protester using PVC pipe to hold himself to an excavator. Photo Credit: KFYR.

The reality is that everyone relies on the products made from oil, and in order to get to the refining process oil must be transported from the source of production to a refinery. Pipelines like Dakota Access make that possible. So whether it’s powering farming machinery, or bagging groceries at the supermarket, or installing new plumbing in your house, petroleum products are what make modern life possible.