ETP sues environmental groups over Dakota Access pipeline campaign

Sept. 4, 2017
Energy Transfer Partners has sued Greenpeace International, Earth First, and other environmental organizations opposed to construction of the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline for manufacturing and materially disseminating false information about the project.

Energy Transfer Partners has sued Greenpeace International, Earth First, and other environmental organizations opposed to construction of the Dakota Access crude oil pipeline for manufacturing and materially disseminating false information about the project. The Aug. 22 complaint in US District Court for North Dakota also alleged that the groups incited, funded, and facilitated criminal and terrorist acts that violated federal and state racketeering laws.

The action called the organizations "a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue ecoterrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims and other purported misconduct, inflicting billions of dollars in damage."

The suit charges that the network's criminal and other misconduct includes:

• Defrauding charitable donors and cheating federal and state tax authorities with claims that they are legitimate tax-free charitable organizations.

• Cyberattacks.

• Intentional and malicious interference with their targeted victim's business.

• Physical violence, threats of violence, and the purposeful destruction of private and federal property.

The groups conducted an organized campaign with attacks that were calculated and thoroughly irresponsible, causing enormous harm to people and property along the pipeline's route, ETP's lawsuit charged.

The Dakota Access pipeline was a legally permitted project that underwent nearly 3 years of rigorous environmental reviews, it said.

The groups' misinformation campaign was predicated on a series of false, alarmist, and sensational claims that ETP, as the project's sponsor, encroached on tribal treaty lands, desecrated sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in building the pipeline, constructed it without consulting with and over objections of the tribe, and used excessive and illegal force against protestors, according to the suit.

It said the groups also claimed that the pipeline inevitably would result in catastrophic oil spills, poisoned water, and massive climate change, while ironically, their own members deliberately and maliciously attempted to cut holes in the pipeline with torches which, if successful, would have caused significant environmental damage and possibly taken lives.

Greenpeace reportedly has said that the suit is politically motivated and without merit.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at reviving the project soon after his inauguration after the Barack Obama administration ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to withdraw a permit for an unconstructed segment under Lake Oahe in North Dakota following protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe (OGJ Online, Jan. 24, 2017; Dec. 5, 2016).

ACE finally reissued the permit in early February (OGJ Online, Feb. 9, 2017).