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The Infiltrator

December 30, 2018

THE INFILTRATOR

How an Undercover Oil Industry Mercenary Tricked Pipeline Opponents Into Believing He Was One of Them

A former Marine working for the private security firm TigerSwan infiltrated an array of anti-Dakota Access pipeline groups at Standing Rock and beyond.

JESSE HORNE STILL struggles to talk about the day he was kicked out of the anti-Dakota Access pipeline movement. It had been an intense week. Searching for direction and ideological fulfillment ever since Iowa’s stand against the pipeline wound down, the 20-year-old had reconnected with some of the state’s more radical pipeline opponents, and the group was now taking on drone warfare. After a protest outside a drone base in Des Moines in which Horne and several others were arrested, two of his fellow activists, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, sat him down and told him to stay away.

“They were asking me if I was an infiltrator,” Horne told The Intercept. “My response was absolutely not.”

There was a lot Horne says he didn’t know at the time — for one, that Reznicek and Montoya had recently been involved in a series of acts of pipeline sabotage. Between March and May 2017, above-ground valves along the Dakota Access pipeline in Iowa and South Dakota were pierced with welding torches, creating new costs for the pipeline company, Energy Transfer, and sending its security personnel into a frenzy. A few weeks after their conversation with Horne, the two women would claim responsibility for the sabotage.

Another thing Horne says he didn’t know: that someone he considered a “brother in the cause” was indeed an infiltrator. For months, a man calling himself Joel Edwards had posed as a pipeline opponent, attending protests, befriending water protectors, and paying for hotel rooms, supplies, and booze.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Energy Transfer, Banks Lost Billions by Ignoring Early Dakota Access Pipeline Concerns

December 4, 2018

Energy Transfer, Banks Lost Billions by Ignoring Early Dakota Access Pipeline Concerns

Anti Dakota Access protesters in Philadelphia

Before that application was filed, on September 30, 2014, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe met with ETP to express concerns about the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) and fears of water contamination. Though the company, now known as Energy Transfer, had re-routed a river crossing to protect the state capital of Bismarck against oil spills, it apparently turned a deaf ear to the Tribe’s objections.

Following that approach proved to be a very costly decision, a new analysis concludes, with ETP, banks, and investors taking billions in losses as a result.

“This case study estimates that the costs incurred by ETP and other firms with ownership stake in DAPL for the entire project are not less than $7.5 billion, but could be higher depending on the terms of confidential contracts,” a new report, “Social Cost and Material Loss: The Dakota Access Pipeline,” concludes, noting that represented nearly double the initial project cost. “The banks that financed DAPL incurred an additional $4.4 billion in costs in the form of account closures, not including costs related to reputational damage.”

In addition, the company’s “poor social risk management” caused taxpayers and “other local stakeholders” to incur at least $38 million in costs, the report concludes.

✔

“This is what it’s all about,” protestor says. “Sacred water.” Not sure guys on left agree.

As opposition to DAPL grew from a handful of locals to a movement attracting thousands of supporters to Standing Rock and backers worldwide, construction fell behind schedule and over-budget, with costs rising from a predicted $3.8 billion to at least $7.5 billion, the new report finds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Environmental Extremism” or Necessary Response to Climate Emergency? Pipeline Shutdown Trials Pit Activists Against the Oil Industry

March 22, 2018

Still: Steve Liptay

“ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISM” OR NECESSARY RESPONSE TO CLIMATE EMERGENCY? PIPELINE SHUTDOWN TRIALS PIT ACTIVISTS AGAINST THE OIL INDUSTRY

AN ACTIVIST IN Montana was sentenced on Tuesday in a case that has become both a touchstone for industry-friendly legislators pushing to increase penalties for pipeline protest and a measure of the U.S. legal system’s ability to recognize the emergency presented by climate change.

On October 11, 2016, while the Dakota Access pipeline protests were in full force, climate activists approached above-ground valve sites on five tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state. After calling the pipeline companies to give warning, they turned the valve wheels in a coordinated attempt to stop the flow of tar sands oil.

Tuesday’s sentencing hearing tested a Montana court’s willingness to apply the severe penalties already available for use against pipeline protesters. For halting the flow of oil through Enbridge’s Express pipeline for several hours, Leonard Higgins, a 66-year-old retired information technology manager for the state of Oregon, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for charges of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief. Higgins was sentenced to three years’ probation and $3,755 in restitution to the pipeline company.

“I’m relieved and actually a bit bewildered. It’s unexpected to me. I came very much prepared and expecting to do some jail time at least,” Higgins told The Intercept. “This is a case where both in terms of the severity of the charges and the large amount of claimed damages, I think they were using it to chill the possibility that others might do similar protest.”

Enbridge had initially claimed more than $200,000 in losses, a figure later reduced to $25,630, including $16,000 worth of replacement chains to secure valves along the pipeline against future tampering.

“The courts and the juries are not hammering individuals in the way these corporations would like to see, so they attempt to use the restitution process to grossly inflate their damage numbers with hope that threatening the citizen with $200,000 might chill others from committing similar acts,” said Lauren Regan, Higgins’s attorney.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Federal Judge Halts Bayou Bridge Pipeline Installation, But Photos Show Damage Already Inflicted

February 26, 2018

Federal Judge Halts Bayou Bridge Pipeline Installation, But Photos Show Damage Already Inflicted

Jody Meche, crawfisher, viewing the Bayou Bridge pipeline construction damage to the Atchafalaya Basin

U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick wrote that she was enjoining further work on the pipeline in the basin “in order to prevent further irreparable harm until this matter can be tried on the merits.” She will release her reasoning for ordering ETP to stop construction in the coming days.

The Bayou Bridge pipeline will be the last leg of the Dakota Access, carrying oil fracked in North Dakota to Louisiana. The final stretch of the project, if built as proposed, will span 162.5 miles from Lake Charles to St. James, cutting through the Atchafalaya Basin, a national heritage area and the country’s largest swamp.


Route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in the Atchafalaya Basin filled with debris.

The lawsuit Earthjustice filed in federal court on January 11 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Gulf Restoration Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Sierra Club, alleges that the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it issued a permit for the pipeline.

The plaintiffs were relieved by the judge’s ruling, and look forward to presenting their case in court, which they are confident will show cause to stop any new pipeline from being built until non-complaint companies fix existing problems.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wyoming Now Third State to Propose ALEC Bill Cracking Down on Pipeline Protests

February 22, 2018

Wyoming Now Third State to Propose ALEC Bill Cracking Down on Pipeline Protests

A Lakota man locked himself to construction equipment building the Dakota Access pipeline

One of the Wyoming bill’s co-sponsors even says it was inspired by the protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the Dakota Access pipeline, and a sheriff involved in policing those protests testified in support of the bill at a recent hearing. Wyoming’s bill is essentially a copy-paste version of template legislation produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

At the organization’s December meeting, ALEC members voted on the model bill, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which afterward was introduced in both Iowa and Ohio.

Like the ALEC version, Wyoming’s Senate File 74 makes “impeding critical infrastructure … a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten (10) years, a fine of not more than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00), or both.” Two of the bill sponsors of SF 74, Republican Sens. Eli Bebout and Nathan Winters, are ALEC members. SF 74 has passed unanimously out of its Senate Judiciary Committee and now moves onto the full floor.

ALEC‘s model bill, in turn, was based on two Oklahoma bills, HB 1123 and HB 2128. The Sooner State bills, now official state law, likewise impose felony sentencing, 10 years in prison, and/or a $100,000 fine on individuals who “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.” As DeSmog has reported, the Iowa bill has the lobbying support of Energy Transfer Partners — the owner of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which runs through the state — as well as that of the American Petroleum Institute and other oil and gas industry companies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Five Spills, Six Months in Operation: Dakota Access Track Record Highlights Unavoidable Reality–Pipelines Leak

January 11, 2018

Sections of pipe sit at an Energy Transfer Partners LP construction site for the Sunoco Inc. Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline project near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, U.S. on Aug. 4, 2017. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued four notices of violation after "inadvertent" spills of drilling fluids associated with horizontal directional drilling for the project. Photographer: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Photo: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg News/Getty Images

FIVE SPILLS, SIX MONTHS IN OPERATION: DAKOTA ACCESS TRACK RECORD HIGHLIGHTS UNAVOIDABLE REALITY — PIPELINES LEAK

REPRESENTATIVES FROM Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, traveled to Cambridge, Iowa, in October to present a series of $20,000 checks to emergency management departments in six counties. The money was, in part, an acknowledgement of the months of anti-pipeline protests that had taxed local agencies during construction, but it was also a nod to the possibility of environmental contamination. One of the counties had pledged to use its check to purchase “HazMat operations and decontamination training/supplies.” Less than a month later, in Cambridge, the Iowa section of the Dakota Access pipeline would experience its first spill.

According to the standards of most state environmental agencies, it was a small spill that wouldn’t require much attention from emergency managers. On November 14, “excessive vibration” caused 21 gallons of crude to leak out of a crack in a weld connection at one of the pump stations, which are situated along pipelines to keep the product moving and monitor its flow. Since the leak was contained at the site, it went unreported to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, although it did make it into a federal pipeline monitoring database.

The Dakota Access pipeline leaked at least five times in 2017. The biggest was a 168-gallon leak near DAPL’s endpoint in Patoka, Illinois, on April 23. According to federal regulators, no wildlife was impacted, although soil was contaminated, requiring remediation. DAPL went into operation on June 1, along with its under-the-radar sister project, the Energy Transfer Crude Oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline converted to carry crude. Together, the two make up the Bakken pipeline system. ETCO leaked at least three times in 2017.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dakota Access Pipeline Company Paid Mercenaries to Build Conspiracy Lawsuit Against Environmentalists

November 16, 2017

NORTH DAKOTA, UNITED STATES - 2017/02/22: Defiant Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors faced-off with various law enforcement agencies on the day the camp was slated to be raided. Many protesters and independent journalist, who were all threatened with multiple felony charges if they didn't leave were met with militarized police on the road abutting the camp. At least six were arrested, including a journalist who reportedly had sustained a broken hip. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Photo: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images

The private security firm TigerSwan worked to build a RICO suit accusing Greenpeace, Earth First, and BankTrack of inciting protests to increase donations.

VIEW MORE FROM THIS TIMELINE STORY

THE PRIVATE SECURITY firm TigerSwan, hired by Energy Transfer Partners to protect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, was paid to gather information for what would become a sprawling conspiracy lawsuit accusing environmentalist groups of inciting the anti-pipeline protests in an effort to increase donations, three former TigerSwan contractors told The Intercept.

For months, a conference room wall at TigerSwan’s Apex, North Carolina, headquarters was covered with a web-like map of funding nodes the firm believed it had uncovered — linking billionaire backers to nonprofit organizations to pipeline opponents protesting at Standing Rock. It was a “showpiece” for board members and ETP executives, according to a former TigerSwan contractor — part of a project that had little to do with the pipeline’s physical security.

In August, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, Donald Trump’s personal attorney for more than a decade, filed a 187-page racketeering complaint against Greenpeace, Earth First, and the divestment group BankTrack in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, seeking $300 million in damages on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners. The NoDAPL movement, the suit claims, was driven by “a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims.”

“It was as if the entire campaign came in a box. And of course it did,” the suit alleges. “Its objective was not to protect the environment or Native Americans but to produce as sensational and public a dispute as possible, and to use that publicity and emotion to drive fundraising.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dakota Access Pipeline Set For Completion After Army Approval

February 1, 2017

Dakota Access Pipeline Set For Completion After Army Approval

With environmentalists already furious at Donald Trump for his recent executive orders to reincarnate the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, their anger is set to overflow following news that the completion of the latter may be just a matter of months, if not weeks.

As Reuters reports, while the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline is nearly complete, just one “hotly contested” section under North Dakota’s Lake Oahe that’s been the topic of massive protests, remains unbuilt. The tribe has been concerned that digging the pipeline under a section of the Missouri River would affect the area’s drinking water as well as the supply for 17 million Americans living downstream. A final easement is required for Dakota Access to cross beneath Lake Oahe.

But on Tuesday evening, the Army has allowed the final section to also be completed.

Acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer “has directed the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with the easement needed to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Sen. John Hoeven said in a statement Tuesday cited by CNN. The North Dakota Republican said he spoke with VP Mike Pense and Robert Speer on Tuesday. “The secretary said it will be approved in days, not weeks,” Hoeven spokesman Don Canton said in a separate e- mail.

While the official easement from the Army Corps has not been released, Hoeven and Rep. Kevin Cramer praised Speer’s decision, which will pave the way for the final phase of the controversial $3.7 billion project. Then, moments ago Bloomberg reported that the Army said it has begun steps to review the Dakota Pipeline request. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Breaking: Justice Department Overrules Court, Dakota Access Pipeline Construction Halted

September 10, 2016

Breaking: Justice Department Overrules Court, Dakota Access Pipeline Construction Halted

(ANTIMEDIA) North Dakota — On Friday, a federal court sided with Energy Transfer Partners, allowing the company to continue construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The ruling came after the Standing Rock Sioux tribe attempted to halt the pipeline’s construction through the justice system because they claimed it would violate federal laws and jeopardize their water supply.

However, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of the Army quickly overruledthe court’s decision, placing a temporary halt on Dakota Access pipeline construction on Army Corps of Engineering lands. Their statement says the decision will take effect until the Army “can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws.”

The press release continued:

“Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time. The Army will move expeditiously to make this determination, as everyone involved — including the pipeline company and its workers — deserves a clear and timely resolution. In the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.”

This development comes on the heels of North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple’s decision to activate the state’s National Guard on Thursday, stoking fears that tensions on the ground could grow. Currently, Native American protesters, or “water protectors,” are staging a peaceful blockade against the pipeline’s construction.

The Justice Department statement’s language could be interpreted as a “voluntary” request to the pipeline builders, and it’s unclear whether Energy Transfer Partners will comply with the request.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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