March 2025, Vol. 252, No. 3
Editor's Notebook
Greenpeace Lawsuit Pays Off, Maybe
By Michael Reed, Editor-in-Chief
(P&GJ) — After eight years of trying, Energy Transfer successfully made its way back to court with a lawsuit that accused the environmental activist group Greenpeace of defamation, physical attacks and arson, among other things.
This time, when the smoke settled, the Texas pipeline company and its subsidiary, Dakota Access, had won a judgment ordering Greenpeace, its grant-making branch and Greenpeace International to pay nearly $667 million in damages, an amount Greenpeace said it the past would “threaten the existence of the organization” – if it paid.
I say “if” in this case for very good reason. It seems that in February, Greenpeace, in Holland, sought an anti-intimidation exemption pertaining to the Energy Transfer case, requesting a court rule the that case in the United States is a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) and should be voided.
SLAPP is a European Commission safeguard designed to protect public participation, and North Dakota is among the 15 states in the United Staes without anti-SLAPP laws – designed to not only help defendants get cases dismissed but also recover its own legal costs.
So, with apologies to Mark Twain rumors of Greenpeace’s demise appear to be greatly exaggerated – or at least headed back to any number of global court rooms.
At any rate, a victory is still a victory and that’s what a state court jury in Mandan, North Dakota, after only two days of deliberation. The jury found that the Greenpeace organizations were, in fact, responsible for “millions of dollars of damages.”
As a point of reference, back in 2019, Dakota Access saw its federal lawsuit against Greenpeace under civil racketeering laws dismissed for falling short of its claims of racketeering and intruding on free speech laws.
The latest court chapter once again stemmed from incidents that occurred between 2016 and 2017 and were related to Dakota Access’ plans to cross the Missouri River upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s land, prompting claims the project would potentially threaten its water. Hundreds were arrested throughout the demonstrations and damage to property ran into the millions of dollars.
More than 10,000 protesters took part in demonstrations at their peak. Among them, 200 separate Native American tribes and political leaders – including the current health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Tribal leaders claimed that they had not been consulted about the construction and that the construction, which they said would encroach on sacred sites.
“Our lawsuit [just concluded] against Greenpeace is about them not following the law. It is not about free speech as they are trying to claim,” Energy Transfer told the Houston Chronicle. “We support the rights of all Americans to express their opinions and lawfully protest. However, when it is not done in accordance with our laws, we have a legal system to deal with that.”
Energy Transfer alleges Greenpeace tried to halt construction and did damage to the company’s name using tactics that included organized trespassing, vandalism and acts of violence. In one act of vandalism confirmed by the South Dakota attorney general’s office, a hole was burned into a section of pipe, apparently with a blow torch. The state placed the price of policing the pipeline site during the protests at $22 million.
Greenpeace International, named in the suit, argued that it should not be a party to action, because it is a separate group from Greenpeace USA.
The pipeline itself was finished in June 2017 and has transported oil ever. Two months later, state regulators approved an agreement, settling allegations that Dakota Access had violated state rules during its construction. The previous year, North Dakota’s Public Service Commission claimed Energy Transfer Partners improperly reported that its workers had found Native American artifacts and removed too many trees from the location.
As part of the settlement, the pipeline company was required to help develop and promote an industry manual for handling discovered artifacts and to plant more trees along the pipeline route than it had previously proposed. The state did not require payment of the $15,000 it proposed originally.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,172-mile, 30-inch pipeline that ships crude oil from the Bakken-Three Forks production area in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. It is capable of transporting up to 570,000 bpd of light sweet crude oil and has an initial capacity of 450,000 bpd.
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