Protesters who did not make the trek to Bismarck said it was what they expected. A prairie there is covered with tepees, tents and RVs. We need to permanently protect our sacred sites and our water.
Advertisement
Word had spread through the crowd that Judge Boasberg denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s request for an injunction to stop the pipeline construction. The biggest concerns are the destruction of historical and cultural sites and the potential risk to the community’s drinking water, should the pipeline leak or break.
The Standing Rock Tribe reacted to the government’s action with surprise.
It was anticipated that these barrels would be moved to the Gulf through the new, swift route via Illinois-rather than the more arduous rail routes to the East and West Coasts, or through pipelines in the Rocky Mountains en route to Oklahoma and eventually Texas. “It’s about our rights as native people to this land. It’s about our rights to be able to call a place home, and it’s our rights to water”, she says.
The $3.7 billion project, which would span four states, has led to heated, sometimes violent protests.
The court ruling was the result of a suit brought by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Army Corps of Engineers for failing to consult with the tribe on the pipeline’s path as required by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and claiming that pipeline construction would cause irreparable harm.
Friday, the tribe called the Obama administration’s intervention “stunning”, saying it set the stage for nationwide reform on projects affecting tribal lands.
A short time after a federal judge ruled that construction could resume on a controversial oil pipeline in North Dakota, the U.S. Departments of Justice, the Army and the Interior issued a joint statement announcing they had put a stop to the pipe’s construction in the Lake Oahe area.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington denied the tribe’s request for a temporary injunction in a 58-page opinion.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who on Thursday proposed legislation that would prevent the Army Corps from approving the pipeline until the agency has completed an environmental impact statement.
Like the Standing Rock Sioux, Maine’s tribes have had conflicts with government and industry.
The majority owners of the DAPL are Energy Transfer Partners L.P. (NYSE: ETP) and Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. (NYSE: SXL). In the wake of the government’s decision, The Hill wrote that the Dakota Access developers declined to comment, but one of their supporters, Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now, said that they were deeply troubled by the decision and the possible long-lasting effect the Obama Administration’s interference could have on “private infrastructure development in the United States”. We know this oil is going to be produced.
Advertisement
The 1,100-mile, $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline was originally expected to start up later this year, to deliver more than 470,000 barrels per day of crude from North Dakota’s prolific Bakken shale play through IL and toward refinery row in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Without the pipeline, drillers may have to discount the price they get for oil so it could be shipped by train.
