March 2017, Vol. 244, No. 3

Features

Richard Kuprewicz: The Man Who Knew Too Much About Pipeline Safety 

As the pipeline industry was being thrust into the final days of America’s political drama last fall, environmental activists at Earthjustice reached out to a pipeline safety icon known for his expertise and independence, Pacific Northwest-based Richard Kuprewicz. The environmental group’s support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s opposition to the $3.8 billion, nearly 1,200-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline project prompted the call to Kuprewicz, who chose to be a paid third-party source on the safety review of the project’s underwater pipeline crossing. Kuprewicz, president of Redmond, WA-based Accufacts Inc., is a chemical engineer with an MBA and a deep resume dating back to the early