 Our next speaker of this afternoon is Travis Holland with MHA Energy. We've worked there for a number of years. We've worked together on a number of different things over the years and it's here to share some of his insights in working in the pipeline industry there. I'm going to be changing. So now, go to Travis. All right. We got some Dickinson State students. Maybe not. Maybe not. Okay, there's a few. So my mom, when I was a kid, that's where my dad met my mom was at Dickinson State. And he thought I was pretty cool because the first words I said to him was like, Forrest, I'll fight you. So, but I've kind of kept that mentality, but my mom, she's sort of a legend in the tribal sector. Dickinson State has their, I don't know what they call it, Ring of Honor or something, you know, like their Hall of Fame. When the insurrectionists were at Nancy Pelosi's desk, and I'm kind of an anarchist. I like chaos sometimes. I make fun of Trump. I make fun of Biden. I voted for Morgan Freeman. So the guys like this at Pelosi's desk, and I'm laughing. And then somebody pointed out the folder next to his feet had my mom's name on it. Alice Spotted Bear. Because one of the few things Congress did do unanimously was pass a Native American childcare bill in her name. So I thought that was pretty cool because they can't be unified in anything, but they did do that with her. And with that said, she said I should always start a meeting with a joke. Most of my jokes are a little off color. So I made up a moderate one today. This is me. So I discovered this year that Mother Nature is going through menopause because she's been having hot flashes every month. So I wrote in December on my motorcycle. I wrote in January on my motorcycle. I wrote yesterday on my motorcycle. You know, yesterday, 55 out. I'm cruising today, 18 below zero. So I guess what we're going on to is this. My other joke is if you don't think he looks good, move to the back of the room. I look better at a distance. But I worked at Dakota Gasification for about 30 years. And I had a wealth of experience, not by choice, just getting moved around. And in 2014, when the buck and boom came into play, the state, the tribe, we were being overwhelmed with pipeline releases. In a large part due to this product right here, this is made out of fiberglass. And industry, once they built something, you know, they built it cheaper because they're trying to save money. They try to salvage it and they make excuses and well, we'll do this, we'll do that. It's never going to happen anywhere else. And it kept happening. So I also did another presentation, the same presentation basically, but I changed the terminology. I called it, what are the odds a million to none? So when the tribe allowed me to come in and regulate this, they sort of recruited or recruited me for this. We took 1.3 million gallons filled down to zero. And we've maintained that. So I've had conversations with the head of PHMSA, Alan Mayberry. At that time, they weren't regulating gathering lines. They said it can't be done. I said, I've done it. And I said, if I can do it, you can do it. But the problem was then and we get back into politics. With our tribe, we don't have Republicans. We don't have Democrats. We've got seven people looking after the interest of 17,000 people. So when I come up with an answer for better quality to our thinking is we don't want to remediate. We want to prevent. So when I come up with these standards, they support me. And it's really blown my mind, you know, as to how well we've succeeded in this. The problem I have right now. Most of you are way too young to remember this, but they used to be commercial with the Maytag repairman. He just had nothing to do. And once we got to that point from spills, spills, spills, spills, the tranquility. Now it gets a little difficult. So I got to come and speak to justify my job. But yeah, so we had a lot of interesting things happen. Like I said, first few years were insane. We can go to the next one. Now I can't even see that. So we'll go to this next question here as well. I'm not anti pipeline. I'm responsible pipeline. So when I was in the other job. You know, I wanted it built responsibly, but I wanted it built. So I'm not opposed to pipelines, even though I have opposed pipelines. I simply demand that they be built responsibly. Because when the dapple issue is going on, I was jokingly so with tribal people. It's called when you're a native, but you do things on a white perspective, that viewpoint you're called an apple. I jokingly called myself the dapple apple because that was the one native that was supporting dapple. And it was because not because of human rights violations. I'll never agree to that. But the fact that I knew it was going to save lives. And in a five year span after it was put in play, the stats show it within Fort Berthold and the neighboring Bakken counties. It's saved 20 lives a year, 100 lives saved. Nobody talks about it, but you need responsible infrastructure. And a lot of you, if you're in that area, you'll see it. You know, those trucks are no longer overwhelming. You know, it's moderation and we can live with that, but we couldn't live with it before everybody I knew cried. You know, we all lost somebody we loved. I had friends who lost their kids in car accidents. It was just insane. We were crying all the time. And the change it's made by having proper infrastructure is night and day. But again, the key is responsible prudent pipelines. So you also have to be prepared for incidents afterwards. And that was one of the things that was amazing when you'd see those emergency responders before. Through the trial and error of having to deal with incidents, they became exceptional. So we had some of the best emergency responders in the nation. I was a very good emergency responder. That's what I used to do. And mostly is because I kept calm during emergencies. I'd see other people. I was an EMT for 23 years. Industrial firefighter 25 has met instructor. But when I saw those guys work as a cohesive unit, it was amazing. I'm glad I don't have to see it anymore. But when I witnessed it, you know, that Wafford City area, Mandarine, Newtown, those guys were amazing as to how smooth they were. But that leads this to preparation, even though you don't know what's going to happen. When you do training, a lot of times people do it and they're doing it with the perspective that everything's going according to plans. When something goes wrong, chaos takes over and you have to be a little more. That's why I didn't prepare for the speech. I had no clue. So I was like, well, I'll get up there. I've worked 40 years in this. I should be able to talk for 40 minutes, you know, just just one minute a year. That's all I need. And I'm still only 49, just so you guys know that. So you want to establish responsible regulations to prevent occurrences under article three of our tribal constitution. We have the right to set our own safety standards, especially when they're not being met at other levels. And that's how we did this. And like I said, the support of the council, you know, backing me and what I wanted and I wanted pipelines again, I just wanted to build well. And they always tell you, no, oh, we can't do that. We can't do that until you tell them no. And it's like, yeah, we can do that. So let's go ahead and go to the next one. This is what I was telling you about. So when we didn't have pipelines, when we didn't have dapple, this happened far, far too often. So you had, I think, two cars, four people severely injured in this. It might have been fatalities. There was at least two helicopters coming in there. But the way those guys work together, those emergency responders was just absolutely amazing. And 25 years of dealing with that stuff, I never saw a better execution. And I was really proud of those guys and I'm glad I don't have to see that stuff anymore. Okay, we can go to the next one. So I'll get you back into my starting point. One of the things we insisted on, in addition to having the right pipe material, is having leak detection. And I think one of the landowners talked about it, you know, most people didn't know, even though they're in positions of authority, they didn't know the industry, they didn't know the ins and outs and the technicalities. Even my engineer, he's a 30 year senior engineer. He never worked with this stuff. He knew of it, but he didn't understand it completely when it came to detection. So the very first meeting I sat down on in this position, and it was a group that had a huge spill, and you had higher ups from EPA, the BIA, other agencies. And I asked a very simple question. I said, why didn't you have leak detection? And they said, you can't have leak detection with liquids, only gases because they're compressible. And I said, you know, that's not true. I said, that technology was available 30 years ago when I started. I guarantee you, you have access to that today. And then they go, yeah, that's true. And all these head haunches started looking at each other like they're lying to us. And then they went on to the next one, and they tried to say pressure differential system was a leak detection system. I said, no, it's not. It's for measuring dirty socks, greens and filters. You could have used it as such if you'd engaged upstream and downstream and realize it was tripping off a zero back pressure. And they once again admitted, you know, I was telling the truth. And at that point in time, I always tell my kids, don't worry about what you want to be when you grow up. I never knew what I wanted to be until I was 50. And at that point in time, I knew exactly what I wanted to be because it was so easy because other people didn't understand it. And they really couldn't be asked me like they were getting away with with other people. So when I get to this thing, another situation was they would try to mislead and they said they had a WinCoo system for SCADA. And SCADA is basically telling you instantaneously when something goes wrong and if you have an issue. And I said a WinCoo system is not a SCADA system. It's a recording system, a 24 hour recording system. So after 24 hours, you know, you're missing a million gallons. That's too late. You know, you have to be instantaneous on responses, keep the releases to a bare minimum. And one of the issues we also had was power. You know, and that's why they would say they didn't have that. So we came up with the requirement for windmill with solar powered, you know, backup. So they would have power to run their SCADA systems no matter how remote. And this is another one with chaos. So it is 25 below zero. That's a produce water sign. And that's open water right in the produce water sign. So that's an absolute, there's no doubt whatsoever that is a produce waterspill. But we go through the routine and, you know, we sampled it, sent it off. The group was really good. They reported it themselves, even though their system didn't show any problems. They shut their system in. We had an old school field, you know, inspector and yeah, that's salt water. That's salt water. So we sent the sample in. It comes back is that was basically salinity from an agricultural field, aka cow urine. So I don't recommend testing, you know, salt water like that. And it ended up being a natural spring. But because the right away is disturbed soil, that's always going to be the weakest length. So when it, you know, permeated underneath the frozen ground, that was the easiest spot and it popped up right there. But I mean, nobody, not one of us thought anything other than an absolute produce waterspill, but you just never know. So you need to verify the next one. So here's another one. We have a pipeline on this bridge and everybody said nothing can happen with a pipeline on the bridge. Nothing can do any damage. And I always said any above ground structure, you there's a risk associated with it. I said it could be a tornado. So this is after fishing tournament. I think I was leading it on big fish, maybe at the time I can't remember. But also the tornado comes in. You know, is this a tailwinds, but one person craft themselves, I guarantee you because they were crossing the bridge with their, you know, one ton truck. Had a camper and then a boat on the back side. The camper actually got blown halfway off the bridge, but the boat and the pickup anchored it. So the whole thing didn't go off. But I can't imagine how scary that is when you're pulling a camper and you see it in your reviews, half of it's hanging off the bridge. But that's actually happened twice now. The second time a friend mind was on the bridge and his pickup was lifting and it was snapping off the light poles on the bridge. And that group again most of these pipeline groups have been really good to work with not all, but most of them have been very good to work with. And I told them about it and they inspected their support structures to make sure the integrity and everything was good on that. And it turned out to be okay but what we did. And where we've stood on this is HDD boring. So we don't want anything crossing over the lake. We don't want anything trenched into the lake. HDD boring came about in 2008. And there's never been a case of an HDD bore failure into a water source. When they build it, sometimes they can frack out and they can miss it. But you're talking bent night, same material clay base they use in drinking water systems. Aesthetically, it's not good, but it's not doing harmful damage to the environment. So what we've been pushing for, and this is where I've successfully opposed pipelines in the past, you've got obsolete pipelines upstream of us. We have inherent water rights with our reservation from when they flooded it. So we have water rights downstream within our boundaries and upstream. And I've pushed and the tribes supported me on this, that everything needs to be bored under the lake. We do not want trenching anymore. So there's pipelines coming up for renewal. The life expectancy was 50 years. And those most of them are renewed already in 2000 and more, you know, around that timeline they came up. They're coming up again now. So they're already 25 years past their life expectancy and they're asking for another 25 years. So you're talking something at the end of it, it's going to be 50 years past this life expectancy. And we're saying, no, the technology is there now, build it correctly. That's the way the dapple is, the dapple's HDD board. You'd have to frack that hundred foot of soil to create a pathway for a two-league. So what it would do if there ever was a bizarre incident, it would follow the bore path out. And the way our terrain is where it enters is higher. So if there was a leak, it'd actually flow away from the lake. It would flow into soil. So it's a safest means and it's one of the things I love about my job because I don't work for the federal government. I don't work for the state. I've got a great relationship with the Corps of Engineers because they know I'm unbiased. I just want to build well and then I'm approving of it, but I'm going to oppose anything that I don't feel is safe. So when we get out and there's pipeline groups that want to build and I've dealt with five of them. There's a group called Michaels that's done the boring and they've done exceptionally well and they're a very good company to deal with. And I can tell these groups that I want your pipeline to be bigger so you have more space down the road if you need it. You have lower operating pressure, you're not redlining it. And I want it bored underneath and I want you to use Michaels because we have an inherent trust with Michaels. We've seen the quality of their work over and over and over again and it is A plus. And the Corps would just sit back and smile because they can't say this stuff, you know, but I don't have skin in the game really so I can say what I want. I'm basically, you know, just somebody giving my perspective on what I feel would be the prudent way to develop and almost every time they've gone with it. And so I've been really pleased that I not only get to protect our reservation, but I get to protect everything upstream because we're all in this together. I mean it doesn't do me any good if there's a release up on the Wilson side, that's still my lake, that's our lake. And so industry for the most part has been very, very good about that. The problem right now and I'll get one and once I get one I'll get the others is to get those obsolete old pipelines when they come up for renewal to be built correctly. You know, not the whole thing. So when you have a petronium spill that crude oil has got a lot of minerals in it and once you get your hydrocarbons down below 100 ppm, these farmers and ranchers want this because it's enriched soil. You can see that the crude spills because the vegetation is a plush nice green versus produce water spills where you're killing that soil for generations. But you've got to keep it on the land if that goes in the water, it's the opposite perspective, you know, so we insist on that crossing being bored. And then we're not going to impose it, you know, we like said we welcome the safe transport North Dakota needs it we need it, but it's got to be done prudently on the next one. Here goes training again. This is one of the water training exercises. It was very realistic because we had a dead fish float to the surface when we did this so it made it nice. But just you got to you got to practice you got to go out there do the routines. So you're not being overwhelmed when a real incident occurs. And it's always good that these groups are getting better and better than that when I go out there and we have these drills. They learn about our water undertake. So because of situations like this, we've modified their plans and said, if this happens in the summertime, we'll send a spotter out, look for an oil sheen on the water. If we see that occurrence, then we shut off our water intake. And so we don't, you know, contaminate our water systems. So a lot of good comes out with trainings and you can't be complacent. You need to keep up on the trainings and add a little difficulty. You can't make your trainings too easy because an incident is never easy. Let's go ahead and go to the next one. So this is a different scenario. We had erosion issues. So this is in the Badlands. And it was a pinch point and it was a watershed area. So normally, you know, it looked okay, but it was burying the weight of a transmission line from probably me to him. And when it was saturated, there was nothing underneath the pipeline. So it was operating as a bridge supporting six feet of soil. And we told them, you know, you have to fix this. But the group went, listen to me. And I told Vimsa, I said, you have to make them fix this. And Vimsa is like, well, we can't do it unless they report it as a problem themselves. So it's the case of the Fox Garden, the hen house, you know, unless the Fox says he has a problem eating too much chickens, he's not going to say nothing. But when I partnered with the core, we went together on this and they got on it and they've been great since then. So what used to be clay washed out a really difficult area, they've actually gone in multiple times. They put down meshing and different material and, you know, expiation made it worth a very safe area now. And that's what you got to do. Sometimes you can't give up because other groups aren't doing it. So if you see an issue, you just got to keep pushing, you know, don't settle for no. We can go to the next one. That is, oh, this is where I get into my rambling. Kill that teleprompter. So another one of the issues we're having right now is like I said, we changed out the fiberglass pipe, you know, that was predominantly produced water. We came up with a coated steel pipe requirement. This flex steel, this stuff is really, really durable and it's helped us get to zero. And the other equivalent of it is a shock or has a flex pipe, which is like a cable woven inside or braided. It's like a braided cable inside of this. You've got poly, you've got steel, and then you got the outer protection layer. No problems with this, no spills. Essentially nothing with this other than it was a faulty install. And that's hardly the problem with the bocking is that when they put it in the group installing it didn't meter it correctly. And they cranked up, you know, thousands of pounds instead of saying, hey, why isn't it pulling through? They just just kept cranking on it and they stretched it out and ruined the pipe. That was just one small thing. It wasn't a big incident. What we're dealing with now, and this is kind of going to our NDSU team. We have an issue with poly pipe. They use this in natural gas collection. And one of the group has had, I can't even count, it's too many releases. And that's been another problem of mine is, you know, I'm not an engineer. Most of these groups have teams of engineers, but I'm the one who figures out their problem for them. In this case, when we went to inspect it, I told them, I said, what's happening? Because they couldn't understand why they weren't having a problem in 2019, but going into 2020 and 21, they were having all these releases. And it was determined that it was arcing through the pipe is building up standing static electricity and arcing. And I said, the reason being is in 2019, it was a tremendous hydraulic hydrology year. We were having saturation everywhere, which was causing pipeline issues because the soil was so saturated, it would slide. And 2020 was like the driest year in 125 years. And so I explained to them what's going on is with no water saturation around the pipe, it's arcing through. Essentially, when there was enough water in the ground, it was, you know, it was grounding it and preventing it. And so, you know, that's one of the groups we're dealing with now. And they always say the same thing, oh, it only happens here, but you talk to the next group, they're having the problem. The next group, they're having the problem. But a lot of times it's not reportable because they look at natural gas as not being a medium reportable, reportable quantity. But we have zero emissions, our standards are 100% stays in the pipe, so we don't accept it. And that's one of the things we're trying to change, essentially get everything to go to seal. We don't have problems with the trunk lines, all these groups that have these polys and fiberglass, their main line is made of steel. And we're just not having issues with that. I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I'm going to anyways, I don't care, you know, because they don't want to get into this. On the DAPL, and I said this with Governor Bergam, I sat on his pipeline improvement panel before, and I said what we need is honest dialogue. And this is when it first started. DAPL had two barrels spilled, basically a gasket on a above ground structure that was made for recovery. It was clay lined, it was built for if something happened. There was only two barrels. National news, that same weekend in Newtown, two trucks collided, you know, golfed and fire. Had that been later in the year, you know, during the drought, it could have easily done a lot of damage to the people there. It could have burned out a lot of homes. But it doesn't catch any nukes, you know, you're talking hundreds of barrels, you know, oil filled, you know, liquids spilled blood. Nobody says a word, but just a hype train. They go crazy over it. But when you look at with pipelines, normally it's the first they call it a pipeline bull in the first five years is where you have incidents. DAPL, the total volume was less than one tenth of a semi truck, which we saw flip over all the time. But they never talk about that. You know, they basically run off of their trunk line, they've never had one gallon spill. You know, they've run the safest pipeline in the nation, taking 5,000 trucks a day off the road, moving product from point A to point B. Our tribe focuses on the financials. I don't get into that. But the actual cost of that without that pipeline, you're talking $19 of barrels shot. So all your gasoline prices, the trolling industry doesn't need an excuse to jack up the gas price. But I guarantee you, if that pipeline goes down, you're going to be paying a lot of money at the pump. So there's got to be a happy medium. We've got to keep these guys in line where they're doing what they're supposed to do to the standards that we need them to. But there is a need for them. You can't overburden any portion of infrastructure. You can't overburden the roads. You can't overburden the rail system. You know, you need a happy medium. And that can be attained as long as it's done prudently. And that's what we push for.