State and federal officials are seeking public comment on the proposed Bridger Pipeline Expansion project to carry Canadian crude from the border in Phillips County, Montana, to a terminal near Guernsey.

The massive 36-inch-diameter pipeline would span 647 miles and move about 550,000 barrels of crude oil daily. The proposed route includes about 210 miles across Crook, Weston, Niobrara, Goshen and Platte counties in eastern Wyoming, according to developer Bridger Pipeline Expansion. The company is a subsidiary of Casper-based Bridger Pipeline LLC, which owns a network of oil pipelines, including the Belle Fourche and Butte pipelines that connect North Dakota, Montana and eastern Wyoming oilfields to the Guernsey storage and interconnect hub.

Bridger Pipeline is owned by True Cos., which has had several significant pipeline spills, including a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in eastern Wyoming in 2022 and an incident that spewed more than 50,000 gallons of Bakken crude into the Yellowstone River in Montana in 2015.

The U.S. Bureau of Management is the lead federal regulatory authority “to review potential impacts of the entire project to ensure environmental, cultural and community considerations are fully evaluated,” according to a BLM press release. The company has also applied to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for a “certificate of compliance” required under the state’s Major Facility Siting Act, which triggers a parallel environmental review under Montana’s Environmental Policy Act.

The 30-day public scoping and comment period initiated this week will help both federal and Montana officials identify potential impacts and alternatives. The agencies will co-host one virtual and three in-person public meetings, to be announced at a later date (check here for updates), they said.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality “will serve as a participating agency” in the BLM’s review, according to the department.

You can learn more about the environmental review for the project here, and choose the “participate now” tab to submit a comment.

Keystone Light?

Some locals in eastern Wyoming refer to the project as “Keystone Light,” a Niobrara County rancher told WyoFile. The name, borrowed from a beer, is a nod to the notion that the Bridger Pipeline Expansion would help fill the industry’s aspiration for the Keystone XL oil pipeline project abandoned in 2021.

Amid major opposition and protests, President Joe Biden — on his first day in office — cited his plans to address climate change by revoking a Trump-era permit for Keystone XL, which was required for the border crossing. The Bridger Pipeline Expansion will also require a presidential permit for the international border crossing, according to the BLM.

Similar to the Bridger Pipeline Expansion, Keystone XL would have transported Canadian oil-sands crude, but was larger — designed for up to 830,000 barrels per day. Its proposed route also differed, crossing in Montana and spanning portions of South Dakota and Nebraska.

One major advantage of the Bridger project, according to company officials, is that the Canada-Montana-Wyoming route follows many existing rights-of-way. About half of the route in Montana is parallel to existing pipelines, and a little more than half of the 210-mile route in Wyoming follows existing pipeline corridors, according to a project description provided by the BLM. 

Additionally, the developer owns much of that existing infrastructure: “The Project would parallel Bridger‐owned infrastructure for roughly 138 miles in Montana and 100 miles in Wyoming.”

The route includes about 6 miles of BLM-managed lands in northeast Wyoming, as well as about 5 miles of Thunder Basin National Grassland, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The federal review includes the Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction could begin by July 2027 and would employ about 400 workers for each of four stages of development, according to a BLM planning document.

Health and environmental concerns

In 2023, Bridger Pipeline and its subsidiary Belle Fourche Pipeline Company paid $12.5 million to resolve penalties related to a series of pipeline spills and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and federal pipeline safety laws.

The company’s track record, combined with allegedly lax oversight by state regulators, is cause for concern, said Jill Morrison, who serves on the board of the Sheridan-based landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council.

“They’ve had a lot of spills and breaks,” Morrison told WyoFile. “Are they going to up their game to be more on top of ensuring we don’t have spills and breaks like other pipelines?”

For its part, Bridger Pipeline says it has launched an artificial leak detection company, FlowState, that monitors its pipeline systems. FlowState was awarded a $2 million Energy Matching Funds state grant in 2024.

Parent company True Cos. created FlowState because it couldn’t find a leak-detection system on the market that satisfied its needs, “so we built one,” Bridger Pipeline spokesman Bill Salvin told WyoFile.

“We have had some instances where our pipelines have leaked — that’s simply a fact,” Salvin said, adding that some of the company’s leaks were related to outdated practices that have since been improved industrywide. “Every one of those incidents is terribly unfortunate. That’s how we view it: We don’t want any [spill] incidents.

“What’s most important to us,” Salvin continued, “is when those incidents happen, that we respond very quickly and with everything we have, and that we learn from them so they don’t happen again. And that’s why we’ve got FlowState today.”

On the heels of one of the warmest and driest winters on record, parts of Wyoming show “significant fire potential” this spring and summer, according to a national forecast released on April 1.

The U.S. has set or is approaching records for the number of wildfires ignited and the acreage burned by March, and Wyoming firefighters and district managers have already responded to blazes across the state. While the National Weather Service forecasts rain and snow for parts of Wyoming this week, many firefighters in the state are nervous about the potential for huge, quickly spreading conflagrations this summer.

“I certainly don’t ever remember a winter quite like this winter,” said J.R. Fox, Campbell County’s fire warden. “Everybody’s definitely nervous about what the fire season will bring.”

The new report, published by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, rated areas of southern Wyoming as having significant fire potential in April, June and July.

The report identifies “above,” “below” and “near normal fire outlooks” across the country and has been produced in some form by the organization since 2002.

Wildland fire managers in Wyoming say the season’s meager snowpack and high temperatures have left an unprecedented and volatile range of fire conditions across the state. A team of scientists recently determined that the record-shattering heatwave that gripped the West in March would be “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Some firefighters are making tough decisions about when and how to use limited resources, while others are reaching out to communities earlier than they ever have before, urging fire-smart behavior.

“From my 40 years of being here, we’re six plus weeks ahead of time” in terms of fire conditions, said Liz Davy, a co-founder of the Greater Yellowstone Fire Action Network. This March, her organization, which helps areas around Yellowstone prepare for and respond to wildfires, started reminding communities early how best to protect property from wildland fires.

Homeowners should remove firewood from on or underneath porches, sweep up dead leaves and trim vegetation around their property, including grasses and shrubs near structures, Davy said. The Greater Yellowstone Fire Action Network also helps communities and homeowners make evacuation plans in case of a wildfire, and Davy is considering taking such steps this spring.

“I’ve never packed a go kit, but this year I’m kind of thinking about it,” she said.

Some areas of Wyoming have already dealt with wildfires. The Kane fire in Big Horn County was discovered on March 22 but behaved like an “August blaze,” reported the Cowboy State Daily. There have also been a few small starts in Natrona County, said Brian Oliver, chief of the Natrona County Fire District.

In a typical year, Oliver said Natrona County would usually be able to contract out some of its firefighting crews and equipment to other jurisdictions during the spring, a valuable source of income for his department. But now, with the risk of fire so high—on March 26, Natrona joined 10 other counties in Wyoming under fire restrictions—Oliver doesn’t see this as an option.

“I think we’re gonna need everybody here at home,” he said. “The fires this year have the potential to go big and be very dangerous very quick.”

Springtime can be when homeowners and ranchers, accustomed to receiving snow during March and April, use fire to maintain their property or prepare fields for the growing season. But Oliver said he and his department have asked ranchers and some subdivisions to put aside their plans to burn.

Even in areas of Wyoming where snowpack has been closer to average, fire managers are nervous about the coming season. 

“The lower elevation snow is significantly less than normal and it’s disappearing earlier than normal,” said Shad Cooper, Sublette County’s fire warden. Cooper said the county has increased its social media messaging about fire danger and stepped up evacuation planning “because we’re seeing fire activity much earlier than normal.”

Last month, Sublette County sent resources over to Lincoln County, where an agriculture burn had gotten out of control, Cooper said.

On the heels of 2024’s record-setting wildfire season in Wyoming, state lawmakers allocated new resources to firefighting during this year’s legislative session. State Forestry will now oversee two 10-person firefighting crews capable of deploying anywhere in Wyoming; lawmakers also improved state firefighters’ benefits.

“That increase in capacity is gonna directly support local response [and] statewide needs,” Cooper said.

With summer still a few months away, firefighters cautioned that it was too soon to know for certain how this year’s season would unfold. Still, the whole state should already be mindful of fire risks, said Jerod DeLay, Wyoming’s assistant state forester and fire management officer.

“Be aware of your surroundings and be mindful of the conditions out there,” he said. “Have a plan for wildfire, because wildfires could wreck your plans.”