The lawsuit of a pipeline company in Texas, in which Greenpeace is put to trial for defamation, disorders and attacks during the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday in North Dakota, says that the organization of environmental representation threatens freedom of speech and its future.
The lawsuit arises from the protests in 2016 and 2017 against the planned crossing in Missouri in Missouri, upstream in front of the reserve of the standing Rock Sioux tribe. The trunk has long argued that the pipeline threatens its water supply. Hundreds were arrested by the thousands of people who protested the project.
Energy transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access claim violation, harassment, defamation and other crimes by the Greenpeace International based in the Netherlands and its American branch Greenpeace USA. In the US dollar lawsuit of 300 million US dollars, the group’s financing low, Greenpeace Fund Inc., is also named.
The court proceedings before the state court in Mandan, ND, should take five weeks.
What are the details of the case?
The energy transfer based in Dallas claims that Greenpeace had tried to delay the construction of the pipeline, mock the companies behind it and to enter the company through pipeline demonstrators, vandalism and violence. The lawsuit is included in the amount of millions of dollars.
The Dakota Access Pipeline has been completed and has been transporting oil since June 2017.
The US tariff threats drive a move of visiting pipeline projects again in order to increase the economic independence of Canada. Sam Samson from CBC looks at the changing dialogue and what is in the way.
Greenpeace International said it should not be mentioned in the lawsuit, since it differs from the two Greenpeace companies based in the USA, operates outside the USA and his employees were never in North Dakota or deal with the protests.
Greenpeace USA said that the plaintiffs had not supported their claims in the years since the protests.
At the beginning of February, a judge refused to throw or limit the applications from Greenpeace to throw out or limit parts of the case.
What is Greenpeace’s position?
“If we lose, Greenpeace USA could end environmental activism for over 50 years,” said the group in a statement.
Representatives of the environmental organization claim that the energy transmission only wants to silence critics of the oil industry.
“This process is a critical test for the future of the first change, both the freedom of speech and peaceful protest, under the (Donald) Trump Administration and beyond,” Sushma Raman, Interim Executive Executive Director of Greenpeace, told reporters. “A bad decision in this case could endanger our rights and freedoms, regardless of whether we are journalists, demonstrators or someone who wants to participate in public debates.”
Greenpeace USA helped support “non -violent, direct training” for security and de -escalation in the protests, said the senior legal advisor Deepa Padmanabha.
The energy transmission argues that “everyone who is employed in a protest in an apprenticeship should be held responsible for every person’s actions in this protest,” said Padmanabha. “So it is pretty easy to see how this type of tactics, if it is successful, could have a serious effect on someone who could consider taking a protest.”
At the beginning of February, Greenpeace International submitted an anti-intimidation lawsuit against the district court of Amsterdam against energy transmission. The company was wrong and should pay costs and damage that arises from its “merit -free” legal disputes. In 2024, the European Union rules that aimed at helping journalists, legal activists and public guard dogs to defend themselves against complaints that are supposed to bother or silence them, even by inserting them into expensive litigation.
The brewing war between Canada and the United States about tariffs has aroused a new interest in abandoned pipeline projects such as Energy East, which would have delivered oil to Ontario and Quebec and Northern Gateway, which would have been the north coast of British Columbia. A new survey by Angus Reid Institute shows that public support for the idea is growing, and politicians have thought about the revival of the projects, but an expert says that Pipeline companies may not be so interested in the idea.
What does energy transmission say?
A spokesman for energy transmission said that the lawsuit was Greenpeace, which do not follow the law.
“It is not about freedom of speaking, as you try to claim. We support the rights of all Americans to express their opinions and legally protest. However, if this is not carried out in accordance with our laws, we have a legal system with which we deal with can do that, “said the spokesman for energy transmission, Vicki Granado, in an explanation.
The company submitted a similar case to the Federal Court in 2017 that a judge had rejected 2019. Shortly afterwards, the energy transfer submitted the lawsuit of the State Court, which was now brought to court.
The energy transmission was introduced in 1996 with 20 employees and 320 kilometers of natural gas pipelines. Today, the company with 11,000 employees has more than 200,000 kilometers of pipelines and related facilities.
