Grand Forks' pipe dream: A second source of natural gas

GRAND FORKS — A malfunction with a natural gas pipeline that runs southward from Canada once nearly left Grand Forks without the precious fuel on a frigid winter day. There was no crisis and nobody’s home went cold that day, but the mere possibility of trouble accentuates why adding energy options to the community is important, according to City Administrator Todd Feland.

“Everything worked out, but it was in the middle of the winter and was really cold out,” Feland told the Grand Forks City Council in early April, outlining an incident that he and others recall anecdotally but don’t specifically remember the date.

According to an incident report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, it likely was a rupture of a TransCanada Pipelines pipe in Manitoba on Jan. 25, 2014, resulting in a loss of gas supply to customers along the Viking Gas Transmission line, which provides service to the Greater Grand Forks region.

Whatever the particulars, City Councilman Ken Vein recalls “we were at risk and had no other backup.”

Someday, Feland and other city leaders hope, a new natural gas pipeline will be constructed to Grand Forks from the south and west. If it’s built, it will provide a second source of energy that heats homes, powers factories and, in their opinion, fuel future growth not only in Grand Forks but throughout northeast North Dakota.

Stirring hope is the early work on a proposed pipeline that, if built, will run from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to Mapleton, near West Fargo. The project, which recently received a boost in the form of a half-billion-dollar commitment in state funding, won’t by itself bring natural gas to the Grand Forks region, but it’s seen by community boosters and state leaders as a big, and needed, first step.

An east-to-west gas pipeline from the Bakken fields is “very high on the list of things that would benefit the state,” Gov. Kelly Armstrong told the Grand Forks Herald.

For the Grand Forks region, it “ranks very high — top one or two, quite frankly,” said Keith Lund, president and CEO of the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corp.

“Power and natural gas are needed for business expansion,” Lund said. “The community, with the leadership of the mayor and many others, has done a great job of business expansion but there are fundamentals that are necessary in order to realize the full potential of growth. Water, transportation infrastructure, power, natural gas — these are all elements that are needed.”

Grand Forks hasn’t lost business because of natural gas constraints, Lund said, but he’s convinced the region needs the resource for future growth.

“This is an effort to use North Dakota gas to fuel North Dakota growth opportunities,” he said. “But more important, to be less reliant on a single (energy) source and have resiliency within the system. … (It’s about) being able to market a greater resource that would attract business interest and, ultimately, business investment.”

For now, it’s all just — pun entirely intended — a pipe dream.

WBI Energy Transmission Inc. is exploring the possibility of a line that would run some 400 miles eastward from near Watford City to Mapleton. According to early plans, the line — dubbed Bakken East — would transport approximately 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day.

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Natural gas is a byproduct of the oil extraction process, and typically has been flared off, a procedure that is a waste of a useful product. Flaring also is environmentally insensitive.

In 2025, the Legislature committed up $50 million annually for 10 years to the Bakken East project. Technically, the money is to purchase capacity on the line, essentially guaranteeing a customer at a set rate for a decade.

With a 3-0 vote on April 29, the North Dakota Industrial Commission made the funding commitment official.

Creating a destination for natural gas — rather than flaring it into the environment — “means oil producers can maintain and increase their output, versus having to curtail production to stay within state goals for reducing the flaring of natural gas at the wellhead,” Armstrong wrote in an op-ed in 2025.

The ability to continue drilling without the concern of flaring limitations will mean continued production of North Dakota oil, Armstrong said. That, in turn, means more dollars flowing into the state’s Legacy Fund, a public savings account that gets its revenue from taxes on oil and gas extraction. Formed in 2010, the Legacy Fund is valued at more than $14 billion today.

WBI is working on permitting and to secure permission from affected landowners. If all goes well, the line could be in service by late 2030.

However, all of the work so far is just to build the line from the oil fields to Mapleton. If and when that part of the project reaches fruition, then the real work on a prospective line toward Grand Forks could perhaps begin.

“The pipe (as planned) today does not go to Grand Forks, but as soon as you move gas (eastward), the next connections become easy,” Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said in March. “I think the level of interest and requests from consumers on the eastern side (of the state) is growing tremendously. Once you get natural gas in the region, your manufacturing, value-add and commercial opportunities will grow.”

In summer 2025, Ness told the Herald that the proposed Bakken East line is “another one of North Dakota’s greatest infrastructure (projects).”

He added: “The long-term ramifications of getting reliable and affordable natural gas to the (Red River) Valley, and the opportunities for competitive manufacturers, value-added ag and to heat homes and run driers, makes it a significant piece of infrastructure.”

And Grand Forks wants in.

The city already has access to natural gas via the Viking Line, which runs southward near Minnesota’s western border from a hub in Emerson, Manitoba. A spur line juts about 10 miles westward to Grand Forks.

According to a chart included in a presentation to the City Council by Lund and Brian Kalk, who had been chief research officer at the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center and who recently became president of Bismarck State College, Northern States Power (also known as Xcel Energy) of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks combines to use roughly 42,000 dekatherms (abbreviated in the industry to dth/d) of natural gas per day. Other top consumers are the University of North Dakota (6,000 dth/d), American Crystal Sugar (4,680 dth/d) and the potato processor J.R. Simplot (3,500 dth/d).

The future, at least as envisioned by Grand Forks city and development leaders, could see a much heartier appetite for natural gas. For example, the potato processor Agristo — set to break ground this year in Grand Forks — is expected to use up to 15,000 dth/d, according to the presentation by Kalk and Lund. A heretofore unrealized but still hoped for fertilizer project, Northern Plains Nitrogen, might have an appetite of up to 60,000 dth/d.

As Grand Forks pursues new agribusiness partnerships, the community’s water availability — thanks to the nearby Red and Red Lake rivers — is a big selling point, as is its immediacy to fertile ag lands and producers.

“But if we don’t have the ability to power them, my big concern is that with new industries, we will be left out of that play,” said Feland, the city administrator. “The city controls all water-related functions. We know what to do with storm water. We can build roads. But one of the biggest challenges we have is our natural gas supply and what we can provide on an ongoing basis. … Industry wants things done as soon as possible and if we can’t answer those questions with certainty, there are other options they could go to. Right now, natural gas is probably one of the biggest (questions).”

Feland said “having abundant natural gas opens so many opportunities for the community.” He notes potential agribusiness and data centers, plus technology growth at places like Grand Forks Air Force Base and the GrandSky aviation business park.

“We would also like to have a redundant line in our community, which would make us all feel better,” he said. “… We like redundancy.”

Development, too.

“If you can bring natural gas to a community like Grand Forks, it opens up other economic opportunities when people look to locate their businesses here in Grand Forks,” said UND President Andrew Armacost.

UND is a big consumer of natural gas, and the university’s Energy and Environmental Research Center has been helping provide city officials with an objective analysis of bringing more of the fuel to Grand Forks.

“Of course, (if expanded natural gas comes to the city) there’s a benefit to UND. … You have to look at it holistically. And so certainly, housing availability, quality of schools, availability of resources like natural gas, are all part of the picture that industry looks at when they’re trying to locate somewhere,” Armacost said.

In April, members of the Grand Forks County Commission began putting their wish list on paper in advance of the 2027 session of the Legislature. Among the priorities is pushing for a connection from the Bakken East line to Grand Forks.

“The county would advocate for extending natural gas lines from the west side of the state to the east side, which could increase the county’s natural gas capacity and bring the industry into the county and city of Grand Forks, possibly adding to the local economic development and increasing gas demand,” the commission members concurred.

“The last I’ve heard, it was going to be going toward Fargo,” Commissioner Terry Bjerke said. “We’d like to get it set up also to Grand Forks, both for business and residential.”

It’s too early to know the cost of a proposed northbound line, Feland and others say. Even the cost of the Bakken East line hasn’t been publicly discussed by WBI, but the North Dakota Monitor reported last year that it could cost $1.2 billion or more. It’s also not known how a line from Mapleton to Grand Forks would be funded.

“We would have to get industry to want to participate in it. Our local service provider is Xcel, which is our distributor of wholesale gas. We likely would need to get them involved and engaged,” Feland said about potential funding methods. “And, obviously, the state of North Dakota. There are certainly funds set aside to help promote the development of this line, and there are others who would hopefully partner. And there could be a request of the city as part of getting a secondary line to Grand Forks. We may not only have to be an advocate for it, but there could be a request.”

Amid all of the uncertainty about the Bakken East and any hypothetical future pipeline built toward Grand Forks, Feland is firm about one thing: “Without an ample supply of natural gas, it’s hard to grow the community and industry in the region,” he said.

Representatives from WBI, the company working to get Bakken East going, declined an interview request from the Grand Forks Herald.

At the state level, finding boosters isn’t difficult. As part of his duties as state agriculture commissioner, Doug Goehring serves on the North Industrial Commission, a three-person board that, according to the state website, manages “certain utilities, industries, enterprises and business projects.” The members include the governor, who serves as chairman, along with the ag commissioner and the attorney general.

Grand Forks’ interest in expanded natural gas is well known by the commission, Goehring said.

“It’s on the minds of the commission because I brought it up every time we were in discussions with WBI. When we were asking them to bid this project, I said ‘understand that you have to build it big enough, the capacity has to be enough to meet the needs of what we need from the Bakken to Fargo. Ultimately, the goal is to get gas up to Grand Forks because they are stranded, hindered from any more real big development until we get gas there.’

“If I am still here when we get (Bakken East) finished and we’re going to be looking at the next phase, it definitely will be part of the conversation,” Goehring said. “My colleagues already know it, and have already heard it and know it. They know it’s one of my goals — to get it to Fargo, but also to get it up to Grand Forks.”