When completed, the $3.8 billion, 1,168-mile underground pipeline will carry up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to a distribution hub in IL. The proposed pipeline also crosses the Missouri River just a few miles upriver from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which protestors argue jeopardizes the water supply for both the tribe and the entire region in the event of a leak. A judge is expected to rule on a lawsuit submitted by the Sioux against the Army Corps of Engineers for lack of consultation.
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The pipeline further violates not only the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, but also the collective human rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and its people to their spiritual, historic, and cultural interests in their ancestral lands across which the pipeline is proposed to travel, rights which are secured to them by the afore-stated global instruments and law. He’s Ojibwe from Minnesota and he helped found the American Indian Movement which became famous for the 71-day siege in Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973. Separate court rulings are anticipated on whether the construction can continue, and whether the demonstrations can continue to take place.
Back home, community members of the Standing Rock tribe are committed to stopping this pipeline. Federal officials say they did give the tribe a chance to survey the pipeline’s route, and tribal members declined. Members of the other tribes will spend their time at a camp with other protesters and say they’ll stay in North Dakota as long as they can.
The Dakota Access pipeline would carry crude oil more than 1,100 miles from North Dakota’sBakken Shale formation to IL.
The pipeline is projected to be completed by the end of the year.
A representative of Precision Pipeline, a contractor for Dakota Access, told the protesters they were not welcome and asked them to leave. “Enough was enough”, said Cody Hall, South Dakota protester.
Gov. Terry Branstad said he’ll authorize the Iowa State Patrol to deal with protesters who could try to stop construction of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline.
The Dakota Access Pipeline route brings oil from the Bakken fields to a hub in IL, from which it will connect to existing pipelines that lead to the Nederland, Texas terminal on the Gulf Cost, a facility owned by Sunoco Logistics, a partner to the Dakota Access project, capable of crude oil exports. The tribe passed a resolution in 2014 in opposition to the building of the Dakota Access pipeline. Some see the pipeline as Keystone XL 2.0, named after the Canada-to-Texas tar sands pipeline that was eventually blocked by the Obama administration. A judge in Washington, D.C., is expected to rule on the tribe’s request for an injunction by September 9.
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Of course, ever since the creation of the first American Indian reservation more than 250 years ago, tribes have been at the mercy of damning federal policies that have allowed for even more theft of Indian lands and exploitation of their natural resources.
