Jury: Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions in damages over pipeline project protests

(The Center Square) – A North Dakota jury on Wednesday found environmental activist group Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for its activities related to protests of construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace over the sometimes violent protests that delayed construction of the pipeline by five months, costing the company lost profits and shareholder value.

Energy Transfer subsidiary Dakota Access, LLC, installed the roughly 1,200-mile pipeline running from North Dakota to Illinois in 2016 and 2017. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation is in southern North Dakota, protested the pipeline due to concerns over a potential leak as well as its route through unceded treaty land.

The sometimes violent protests garnered international attention and drew more than 100,000 people to the area from April 2016 through most of February 2017. Greenpeace supported the protests with funding, people and supplies, and Energy Transfer blamed the environmental group for some of the unlawful acts that took place there including vandalism – as well as for the eventual decision of nearly half the pipeline’s investors to reduce or end their commitment to the project.

The company cites the protests as the reason for a five-month delay in the pipeline’s completion, forcing it to miss a Jan. 1, 2017, online production date.

Greenpeace maintained its primary involvement in the protests was sending indigenous nonviolent direct action trainers, camping supplies and a biodiesel-powered solar truck to the site and that the lawsuit against it was an attack on First Amendment rights.

This is a developing story.