etp2 bak txt

9 22 broke code no edit button work

ETP 2 kelcy warren

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ymail 8 25

A pro-corporate judge scheduled a hearing on August 20th on Trump friend Kelcy Warren’s “emergency motion” to force Greenpeace to drop the lawsuit it filed against Warren in Dutch courts. Greenpeace is fighting for survival after it was hit with a crushing $669 million verdict in March after a rigged jury trial in a pro-Trump county in North Dakota.

Let’s be clear: Warren's latest motion is preposterous.

No US judge has the power to order a judge in a foreign country to withdraw a lawsuit.

So why is Judge James Gion even scheduling a hearing?

It’s simple. We believe the entire proceeding is corrupt. Warren’s law firm, Gibson Dunn, has repeatedly been called out by courts around the world for engaging in unethical practices. That's probably why Warren hired them.

The Montana Supreme Court once found the firm engaged in “legal thuggery” on behalf of its corporate clients. This is also the same law firm that locked up for almost three years in retaliation for helping Amazon communities win the landmark Ecuador pollution case.

Warren’s latest move is right out of the Trump playbook – declare a fake “emergency” to grab more power over not only Greenpeace but the entire client movement.

We are not going to take Warren’s bullying. But we need your help.

A donor has agreed to match all donations up to $10,000 from now until the end of the week so we can ensure Judge Gion understands that the world is watching his every move.

We also will use our trial monitoring report – which our attorneys are writing right now – to galvanize millions of people including hundreds of legal scholars to help protect Greenpeace.

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congrats you evil feck, 1st non-state actor to do human rights violations, pvt sec honduras

see ETP

also etp tag

activist and press supp bayou LA

renamed 2 917

9 22 email

For nearly two years, The Intercept has been fighting an expensive legal battle to obtain 60,000 pages of public documents about pipeline giant Energy Transfer and TigerSwan, the private security firm that surveilled Indigenous-led activists who were brutally attacked protesting against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2017.

The law is on our side. We’ve won key rulings at the North Dakota Supreme Court. These documents should already be public.

But Energy Transfer continues to oppose the release of all the documents, and it’s hired one of the most famously combative law firms in the country: Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.

The firm’s founder, Marc Kasowitz, has been described as the “toughest lawyer on Wall Street,” an “uberlitigator,” and “the Donald Trump of lawyering.”

In fact, according to public reports, Kasowitz and his firm represented Trump himself for over 15 years in countless legal fights from Atlantic City to the White House. Kasowitz has also represented the tobacco industry and corporate raider Carl Icahn. He even represented Bill O’Reilly after he was fired by Fox News for sexual harassment.

Now, with the nearly unlimited resources of an oil company behind it, Kasowitz Benson Torres is fighting our pipeline lawsuit tooth and nail. We won’t stop fighting for the truth, but we have to be prepared for whatever they throw at us — and as a nonprofit news outlet, we rely on reader donations as a key source of funding for our reporters and legal team

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/05/03/keystone-xl-future-pipeline-permits

On April 15, Judge Brian Morris nullified water-crossing permits in Montana that were granted for the Keystone XL, a major setback for the long-embattled tar sands oil pipeline. The ruling came just days after Keystone XL owner TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, obtained billions of dollars in subsidies from the Alberta government as global oil prices plummeted.

The oil and gas industry has taken notice. Seemingly just a ruling on Keystone XL — the subject of opposition by the climate movement for the past decade — the ruling could have far broader implications for the future of building water-crossing pipelines and utility lines.

In his decision, Judge Morris cited a potential violation of the Endangered Species Act when he ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do a deeper analysis of potential impacts to protected species. Morris required the Corps to demonstrate whether or not it could construct the pipeline without harming endangered species, such as the Pallid Sturgeon or the American burying beetle. Instead, the Army Corps “failed to consider relevant expert analysis and failed to articulate a rational connection between the facts it found and the choice it made,” Morris ruled, when the Corps gave Keystone XL the initial green light.

The original July 2019 complaint in that case — filed by Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for Biological Diversity — also argued that the Army Corps had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in using an obscure regulatory lever to fast-track the review process.

Known as Nationwide Permit 12, the permit only requires a short environmental analysis compared to the more robust environmental impact statement required under NEPA for other major infrastructure projects. But Morris also wrote that the decision applied not just to Keystone XL, but to all major federal projects aiming to utilize Nationwide Permit 12, calling for it to be “vacated pending completion of the consultation process and compliance with all environmental statutes and regulations.”

Just two days after this decision, Army Corps regulatory program Chief Jennifer Moyer wrote in an email obtained by the Associated Press that the agency should suspend the program indefinitely “out of an abundance of caution” until the issue is resolved legally.

The Trump administration has already requested a procedural halt on implementing Morris’ decision until its potential appeal weaves its way through the legal system.

“The Court has eliminated Nationwide Permit 12 for use by any utility line project anywhere in the country, which has extraordinary and immediate implications for numerous projects,” the U.S. Department of Justice attorneys wrote on behalf of the Army Corps.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the lobbying and advocacy voice of the oil and gas industry, has also filed an affidavit in favor of putting a procedural halt to Morris’ ruling.

“The ability to provide reliable energy is even more important now during this sensitive and challenging time brought on by COVID-19,” Robin Rorick, Vice President of Midstream and Industry Operations for API, wrote in the affidavit. “The Court’s Order could threaten API’s members’ ability to continue numerous energy and infrastructure projects, affecting the health of numerous companies and job security in an already-strained economy.”

API also joined North America’s Building Trades Unions and Interstate Natural Gas Association of America in denouncing the ruling along similar lines.

'Single and Complete'

Nationwide Permit 12 historically was used for small “single and complete” projects crossing water parcels half an acre in size or smaller.

But in the aftermath of protests and civil disobedience actions taken against Keystone XL, the Obama administration began using that permitting process to split pipelines into hundreds or thousands of half-acre pieces. The process was a way around the more robust and democratic National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulatory process, which involves both a public commenting and public hearing phase. Nationwide Permit 12 was also used to push through the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as the southern leg of the Keystone XL, both greenlighted by President Barack Obama.

During the Obama era, environmental groups decried this as a form of “segmentation” and a way out of complying with NEPA, which they routinely challeneged in court with some success—though not enough to undo the legal lever. The bedrock environmental law is now under further attack by President Donald Trump, with the administration trying to remove climate change contribution as a factor analyzed under the law for major projects and aiming to narrow the scope of and time it takes to complete these environmental impact reviews.

[vid]

Since March 2017, the Trump administration has utilized Nationwide Permit 12 over 37,000 times, the AP reported. As it stands today, the Army Corps’ decision to halt use of the Nationwide Permit 12 fast-track tool has put 360 permit applications on hold.

“The reason that matters is that the public and the communities and everybody that lives there has the chance to get involved in the process,” Eric Huber, Senior Managing Attorney with the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, told DeSmog. “Otherwise, these special permits just allow a pipeline company to go out and start construction without notice to anybody or to take private property and just proceed and blast this through regardless of how the local community thinks of it.”

External corporate attorneys, too, have taken notice and expressed their own concerns about the ruling.

“The decision puts in limbo thousands of infrastructure projects nationwide that rely on [Nationwide Permit] 12 for the construction, maintenance, or repair of utility lines and poses particularly acute problems for the oil and gas industry, which relies on the permit to facilitate projects ranging from large interstate pipelines to smaller gathering lines at exploration and production sites,” wrote attorneys from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm with close ties to the Trump administration, in one such reaction to the ruling.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include the American Petroleum Institute, American Public Power Association, Freeport LNG, Talos Energy, Jordan Cove LNG, WPX Energy, and the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

Another firm heavily involved in fossil fuel industry litigation and lobbying, Steptoe & Johnson, also weighed in on the ruling and wrote that it could have the impact of “extending permitting time frames for these types of projects” going forward. The firm’s fossil fuel industry lobbying clients include American Gas Association, Gas Technology Institute, and Peabody Energy.

Permian Highway Pipeline in Texas

The legal precedent set in the Keystone XL case is already playing out in federal courts.

On April 30, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against the Army Corps of Engineers over another controversial pipeline. The complaint says the Army Corps did not comply with NEPA in issuing a Nationwide Permit 12 to the 428-mile Permian Highway gas pipeline. It also argues the agency is not currently in compliance with the order in the Keystone XL case because it has continued to allow pipeline construction under the contested Nationwide Permit 12 program.

“It is outrageous that the Corps approved this project without public notice or opportunity to comment on their permits,” Rebecca McCreary, a Sierra Club attorney, said of the Permian Highway pipeline in a press release.  “Nationwide Permit 12 allows for no public hearings or participation by the local communities before the Corps permits construction to start, nor is there public notice or comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits allowing harm to the endangered species along the route. The Corps should stop this project immediately.”

Owned by Kinder Morgan, Permian Highway is a pipeline slated to carry gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Texas’ Permian Basin east across the state. Kinder Morgan told DeSmog it was aware of the lawsuit, but declined to comment on it and the broader Nationwide Permit 12 issue.

Permian Highway has already seen issues with spills into water systems, with one late March incident spilling 36,000 gallons of drilling slurry — including a carcinogenic additive — into groundwater.

[twt]

Responding, the Hays County Commissioners Court voted on April 22 to rescind road permits given by the Texas county to allow Kinder Morgan to drill underneath county roads as it builds the pipeline. And Kinder Morgan, too, has suspended construction on this portion of the pipeline as it “determines the best path forward” in the aftermath of the spill, the company told Houston Chronicle.

The City of Austin, City of San Marcos, Hays County, Travis County, and others also filed their own Endangered Species Act lawsuit in February, arguing that the pipeline could threaten protected Golden Cheeked Warblers, two salamander species, and their habitats.

Keystone XL Decision Looms

In the Keystone XL case in Montana, Morris recently denied the Army Corps a procedural stay in the case. TC Energy, for its part, wants the decision struck down as it applies both to its own pipeline and for the permitting program at large.

“If TC Energy does not receive authorization from the Army Corps by early July, its construction plans will be significantly impacted,” Gary Salsman, a TC Energy vice president for the Keystone XL project, wrote in his April 29 affidavit. “Currently, TC Energy is evaluating potential options that would be available to it in that circumstance, each of which have significant adverse consequences.”

Those “potential options,” Salsman wrote, include a potential construction delay across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska; a change in construction plans this year to avoid the waters it is currently slated to cross that are impacted by the vacating of Nationwide Permit 12; or ending construction all together. He added that if construction does not begin in 2020, it could cost the company $750 million to $1.3 billion.

Morris could make a decision on how broadly his Nationwide Permit 12 decision applies as soon as May 8. Regardless of the outcome, Morris' next move will likely face an appeal from either side.

TAGS:

Permian Highway PipelineBrownstein Hyatt Farber SchreckKinder MorganArmy Corps of EngineersAmerican Petroleum InstituteSierra ClubKeystone XLPermian Basinoil sandstar sandsNationwide Permit 12Brian MorrisTC EnergyTransCanadaTrump AdministrationObama administrationNational Environmental Policy ActClean Water Actendangered species act

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hamm and kelcy etp in bakken (tho might want to bleed out wildcat indep smaller?)

cf antonia juhaz bakken bailout? oil -40$ bakken, 200b$ debt; in 2008 oil 150$, many poor cty could not afford, helped trigger Gt Recession?

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220 search: Energy Transfer Partners bank kelcy warren capital invest dapl

https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/26/donald-trump-dakota-access-pipeline-investment-energy-transfer-partners

no lnx guk

dakota Access pipeline company and Donald Trump have close financial ties

This article is more than 3 years old

Trump’s financial disclosure forms show he invested in Energy Transfer Partners, operators of the controversial pipeline, and its CEO donated to his campaign

Support our fearless, independent journalism with a contribution or by becoming a member

Oliver Milman in New York

@olliemilman

Wed 26 Oct 2016 16.38 EDTFirst published on Wed 26 Oct 2016 06.00 EDT

Donald Trump’s close financial ties to Energy Transfer Partners, operators of the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline, have been laid bare, with the presidential candidate invested in the company and receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from its chief executive.

[Over 120 arrested at North Dakota pipeline protests, including journalists

Read more]

Trump’s financial disclosure forms show the Republican nominee has between $500,000 and $1m invested in Energy Transfer Partners, with a further $500,000 to $1m holding in Phillips 66, which will have a 25% stake in the Dakota Access project once completed. The information was disclosed in Trump’s monthly filings to the Federal Election Commission, which requires candidates to disclose their campaign finance information on a regular basis.

The financial relationship runs both ways. Kelcy Warren, chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, has given $103,000 to elect Trump and handed over a further $66,800 to the Republican National Committee since the property developer secured the GOP’s presidential nomination.

On 29 June, Warren made $3,000 in donations to Trump’s presidential campaign. The limit for individual contributions to a candidate is $2,700 per election and it’s unclear whether Trump returned $300 to Warren. Trump’s campaign was contacted for comment.

Warren made a further $100,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee among Trump’s campaign, the RNC and 11 state parties, on 29 June. A day earlier, the Energy Transfer Partners chief executive doled out $66,800 in two separate donations to the RNC.

Play vid]

Raw footage of mass arrests at North Dakota pipeline protest – video

Trump is therefore indirectly linked to Dakota Access, a $3.8bn pipeline development that will funnel oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The 1,170-mile pipeline has caused uproar among Native American tribes as it runs close to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. A protest camp, set up over fears the pipeline will poison water and destroy cultural heritage, has been the scene of repeated clashes between protesters and Energy Transfer Partners security staff.

A court challenge has allowed the project to go ahead but the federal government, which initially approved the project, is now reassessing its decision following an outcry by tribes and has placed a temporary halt to construction on federal land.

Trump has signaled his opposition to any restrictions on the development of oil, coal or gas, telling a crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last week that he would “lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks to allow these vital energy infrastructure projects to go ahead”.

“We have roadblocks like you’ve never, ever seen – environmental blocks, structural blocks,” he said. “We are going to allow the Keystone pipeline and so many other things to move forwards. Tremendous numbers of jobs and good for our country.”

Jesse Coleman, a researcher at Greenpeace, said Trump seems to know “very little” about energy policies other than to side with wealthy fossil fuel interests.

“Trump likes to say he’s an outsider candidate but he’s very close to fossil fuel tycoons and accepts campaign donations from them,” he said. “Warren wants powerful people to be sympathetic to his business plans and donating to them is his MO.”

Warren has worked in the energy industry for the past 25 years and has a net worth of $3.8bn, according to Forbes. The Texas-based businessman has said concerns over the Dakota Access pipeline are “unfounded” and insisted there are no Native American artifacts at risk from its construction. He vowed that Energy Transfer Partners will press ahead with the project.

Warren has been an enthusiastic backer of Republican politicians, contributing the maximum allowable amount to the campaigns of the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and Fred Upson, chairman of the energy and commerce committee. He also contributed $6m to a committee backing an unsuccessful presidential bid by the former Texas governor Rick Perry.

Greg Abbott, the current Texas governor, received $555,000 from Warren during the 2014 election cycle and subsequently appointed the businessman, and his wife Amy, to state boards. Energy Transfer Partners has teamed up with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to build an 148-mile natural gas pipeline through west Texas to the Mexican border – a plan that has been opposed by affected ranchers and environmentalists.

Dakota Access has sparked the most vociferous protests, however, with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe escalating its grievances to the UN and, most recently, the US justice department. On Tuesday, the tribe requested that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, investigate alleged strip searches, dog attacks and pepper-spraying by police and security personnel against Native American protesters.

“Peaceful protests are being met with military vehicles and heavily armed law enforcement personnel in riot gear,” the tribe’s letter states. “To many people, the military tactics being used in North Dakota are reminiscent of the tactics used against protestors during the civil rights movement some 50 years ago.”

Energy Transfer Partners refused to comment on the donations.

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Rick Perry Resigns From Boards of Dakota Access Pipeline ...www.thestreet.com › politics › rick-perry-resigns-from-boards-of-dak.....q=cache:EGgYdQ_BFE8J:https://www.thestreet.com/politics/rick-perry-resigns-from-boards-of-dakota-access-pipeline-companies-13945434+&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" ping="/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search%3Fq%3Dcache:EGgYdQ_BFE8J:https://www.thestreet.com/politics/rick-perry-resigns-from-boards-of-dakota-access-pipeline-companies-13945434%2B%26cd%3D16%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus&ved=2ahUKEwiEmIu3uOjnAhUDbq0KHdgYAPcQIDAPegQIBxAG" style="text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">

Jan 6, 2017 - The former governor of Texas and current energy secretary nominee, Rick Perry, has resigned from the boards of Energy Transfer Partners ...

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pension plan / crony capitaLISM ukraine scandal an ASSET?!

Rick Perry Rejoins Pipeline Company Energy Transfer’s Board of Directors

Former U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has rejoined the board of the company that oversees Energy Transfer Partners, one of the biggest pipeline operators in the United States. The company, owned by billionaire Kelcy Warren, is best known for its Dakota Access crude oil pipeline, the construction of which drew months of massive resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American nations. Perry had previously served as a director of Energy Transfer Partners before stepping down in 2016 as the corporation faced backlash over the Dakota Access pipeline

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https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/too-far-too-often/

6/18 ***

see daplgrnpeace18

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aha 519: is it a criminal enterprise?  activ suppress, honduras?

see suncor , tar sands,

see kelcy warren CRONY CAPITALISM

5/17 etp tag then saw redumbdent b/c xl tag

see tigerswan

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/08/energy-transfer-tigerswan-bribery-conspiracy-charges/

pIPELINE GIANT ENERGY TRANSFER AND ITS PRIVATE SECURITY CONTRACTORS FACE BRIBERY CHARGES IN PENNSYLVANIA

Alleen Brown

December 8 2019, 10:25 a.m.

SECURITY PERSONNEL WORKING for Energy Transfer, one of the largest and most controversial oil and gas pipeline companies in the U.S., have been charged with bribery and criminal conspiracy for allegedly recruiting, hiring, and hiding payments to Pennsylvania state constables.

According to a complaint filed December 3 by Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan, Energy Transfer illegally hired 19 constables to guard the Mariner East 2 natural gas pipeline, which has faced opposition from residents over the project’s ecological impact, explosion risks, and violations of their property rights. The constables were encouraged to wear their uniforms and badges and carry their guns, in what Hogan described as an intimidation tactic.

While it is not uncommon for companies to hire uniformed off-duty police officers to provide security services, in Pennsylvania, constables are elected officials barred from private security work. Furthermore, they are required to report outside income of more than $1,300. None of the seven who met that threshold did, according to the complaint. And in what appeared to be an attempt to hide the illegal activity, Energy Transfer paid the constables via a series of subcontractors, in many instances using handwritten checks that were not claimed for tax purposes.

Hogan charged an Energy Transfer security manager, two contractors for the security firm TigerSwan, and two former state troopers for involvement in what his office called a “buy-a-badge scheme.”

“We do not believe these charges have any merit,” Energy Transfer spokesperson Amanda Gorgueiro told The Intercept in an emailed statement. “The Pennsylvania constables in question were hired by an independent, Pennsylvania-based security firm to help maintain the safety of our worksites. Local law enforcement never expressed any objection to this security plan when it was discussed and implemented.”

TigerSwan did not reply to requests for comment.

The case is an example of the myriad ways that corporations behind some of the country’s most controversial fossil fuel projects are using local law enforcement to overcome opposition. And it’s only the latest scandal involving Energy Transfer’s security personnel. The state security boards of Louisiana and North Dakota have each confronted TigerSwan for attempting to circumvent local licensing laws.

In North Dakota, where Energy Transfer hired TigerSwan to guard the Dakota Access pipeline, the security firm faced scrutiny after The Intercept published leaked documents detailing its invasive surveillance practices, which involved infiltrators, aerial monitoring, and a close collaboration with local law enforcement to thwart massive protests near the Standing Rock reservation. The documents reveal that both of the TigerSwan contractors charged in Pennsylvania previously worked on the Dakota Access pipeline.

Until now, Energy Transfer has successfully distanced itself from the deeds of its contractors. Hogan’s case offers a rare glimpse of the pipeline company’s hand in questionable security activities.

The Mariner East 2 pipeline carries volatile propane, butane, and ethane from western Pennsylvania and Ohio’s shale fields to a terminal near Philadelphia. The natural gas liquids are mostly destined to become ingredients for plastics manufacturing in Europe. Sunoco, the Energy Transfer subsidiary in charge of Mariner East 2, repeatedly spilled drilling mud during construction, contaminating drinking water wells, and the construction has opened sinkholes on properties along the pipeline’s route.

...

long no lnx

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lake charles LNG export

Kelcy Warren's next frontier? Energy Transfer opens first office ...

https://www.dallasnews.com › business › energy › 2019/04/02 › kelcy-war...

Apr 2, 2019 - Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners will expand its operations to China and plans to open its first office outside the United States in Beijing.

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https://www.colorado.edu/program/fpw/2019/04/19/bigger-problem-how-energy-transfer-partners-and-other-pipeline-companies-do-business

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OMFG

may 2017

Ruth Hopkins, Indian Country Today Media Network

https://truthout.org/articles/footing-the-15-million-bill-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-s-private-army/

Last fall, the eyes of the world were fixated on Standing Rock.

Among the images burned into the brains of so many abroad were those of Morton County sheriff’s department, joined by law enforcement officers from across the country, bedecked in military gear and armed to the teeth, brutalizing defenseless water protectors for expressing their first amendment rights and freedom of religion. Eyes were opened when mercs sicced vicious attack dogs on women and children guarding sacred burial grounds with their lives. Folks thousands of miles away watched in horror as they witnessed concussion grenades being thrown into crowds and elders being maced in the midst of sweat lodge raids. People will never forget live stream video picked up by mainstream media, showing hundreds of civilians being shot with water cannons in subzero temperatures by a corporate police state army.Some photos of injuries were judged too graphic to post by social media, as they revealed a young woman with a near severed limb and another who’d been blinded in one eye.

This was not Iraq or Afghanistan. There was no foreign enemy invading our shores. These events occurred in the middle of the United States, on Lakota treaty lands; and the only thing these innocent people had done was dare to stand in the way of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the same one Bismarck, North Dakota residents rejected due to fears it would contaminate their water supply. This war zone created by Dakota Access and Morton County was meant to subdue Standing Rock residents and water protectors and force them to accept an unwarranted risk to their fresh water and the desecration of ancestral graves, under the barrel of a gun.

Here in the states, hundreds of Native Nations and the American public sided with Standing Rock. Scores came to camp along the shores of the Mni Sosa (Missouri River). Others rallied in the local cities, signed petitions, and called the White House. Millions were outraged by the injustice.

Yet who is paying for the corporate police state brutality I just mentioned? You are.

Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), who accepted money from Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline) and has been vocal in his support of both the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Keystone XL pipeline, has announced that North Dakota will receive $15 million in federal funds to reimburse the state for costs incurred as a result of militarizing Barney Fife and company while they pushed the pipeline through for ETP and engaged in the violent, forced removal of water protectors. Hoeven slid said monies into the Department of Justice’s budget as part of Fiscal 2017 funding legislation.

By the way, Hoeven sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Welcome to Custer’s wet dream.

The distinguished Senator from North Dakota would have us believe his state was alone in its mission to extinguish #NoDAPL. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When Morton County requested backup, law enforcement officials from across the nation came to North Dakota via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). The Sheriff’s Association also showed up in full force.

New York Daily News writer Shaun King obtained audio where Energy Transfer Partners freely admitted that they worked closely with the Sheriff’s Association, and wow, did they ever. They became one and the same.

Water protectors who lived at camp can attest to ETP and law enforcement’s collusion and fraternization, but the record speaks for itself.

The Sheriffs’ Association has a $3.46 million budget, according to tax forms. Some of this funding comes from corporate sources, like TigerSwan. TigerSwan maintains offices in Iraq and Afghanistan. TigerSwan’s CEO is a former adviser to the multinational private security firm, Blackwater. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a Trump campaign donor and the brother of Betsy DeVos, the US Secretary of Education. Besides funding the Sheriff’s Association, TigerSwan is in charge of Dakota Access intelligence and supervising overall security for the company. Tigerswan works for Dakota Access, while funding and partnering with the Sheriffs’ Association.

The Sheriff’s Association purchased military gear from the US Department’s Defense Logistics Agency thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program. Think corporate welfare for the defense industry.

Wait, there’s more. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren offered to reimburse North Dakota and Morton County for costs due to defending the Dakota Access Pipeline.

So why are US taxpayers forking over $15 million to North Dakota?

Despite the fossil fuel industry’s wishes, America is not an oil company with an army. We should not be bankrolling our own oppression.

Incidentally, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not even operational yet, and it’s already sprung a leak in South Dakota, just southwest of the Lake Traverse Reservation. End this foolishness.

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https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/02/ceo-kelcy-warren-dakota-access-pipeline-energy-transfer-partners-country-music/

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http://polluterwatch.org/kelcy-warren

Texan businessman Mr. Kelcy L. Warren is the current chairman and Chief Executive Officer of energy pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. In 1995 Warren and Ray C. Davis cofounded Energy Transfer Equity, a master limited partnership that owns the general partner and 100% of the incentive distribution rights (IDRs) of Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. (NYSE:ETP) and Sunoco LP (NYSE:SUN).

The Wall Street Journal - Kelcy Warren

Energy Transfer Equity - Company Overview

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1978, Warren started his career in energy industry. Also he serves as a Member of Development Board at University Of Texas At Arlington.

UT Arlington University Gifts - Kelcy Warren

Professional History:

Chief Executive Officer at PennTex Midstream Partners, LLC and Penntex Midstream GP LLC since November 01, 2016

Chief Executive Officer of Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co LP.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Transfer Partners, L.P.

Co-chief Executive Officer of the general partner of ETC OLP and as Co-chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman of the Board of the general partner of La Grange Energy since 2002

Chief Executive Officer at LE GP, LLC since August 15, 2007

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Transfer Partners, L.L.C. since August 15, 2007

Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman of the Board of Energy Transfer Partners, L.L.C. since January 2004

President of the general partner of ET Company I, Ltd., since 1996 (Prior to the combination of the operations of ETC OLP and HOLP)

Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chairman of Energy Transfer Partners LP and U S Propane LLC since January 2004

Co-Chief Executive Officer of OEC Compression Corp. since September 1999

President and Chief Operating Officer of Cornerstone Natural Gas Inc. from June 1993 to 1996 and its Executive Vice President from 1989 to 1990

Prior to forming Energy Transfer Company, he was employed by Endevco Inc., a natural gas pipeline and processing company and predecessor of Cornerstone Natural Gas Inc., from 1981 to 1992. At Endevco, he served in many capacities, including President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Endevco, he started his career working at Lone Star Gas Company.

Bloomberg - Energy Transfer Partners LP (ETP: New York) - People

In addition to his private island in Honduras, Warren keeps a 23,000 foot mansion in the exclusive Preston Harlow neighborhood of Dallas and manages a record label, Music Road Records. His wife, Amy Warren, manages an affiliated music festival called Cherokee Road which takes place each Summer on the Warren’s 8,000 acre Los Valles Ranch in Cherokee, TX.

QUOTES:

“Concerns about the pipeline's impact on the local water supply are unfounded.”

• Energy Transfer Partners Letter in Response to #NoDAPL Protests

Dallas News

"I just don't think it's going to happen. This is state of the art."

-Kelcy Warren was asked by the host of Valley News about what is he doing with Dakota Access Pipeline to make sure there are no oil leaks and environmental impacts on November 21, 2016

Valley News

"This action is motivated purely by politics at the expense of a company that has done nothing but play by the rules it was given … To propose, as the Corps now does, to further delay this pipeline and to engage in what can only be described as a sham process sends a frightening message about the rule of law.”

• Kelcy Warren on the US Army Corps of Engineers Decision Not to Proceed Until Warren Talked to Native Leaders

Dallas News

EVIDENCE:

PRWatch lists Energy Transfer Partners as a Trustee Level sponsor of a 2014 ALEC conference.

MONEY IN POLITICS AND BANKROLLING CLIMATE DENIERS

Warren and his company intervene in local and national politics, and bankroll organizations and people that deny climate change science.

Rick Perry, the former Governor of Texas and the current Secretary of the Department of Energy, took a position on the corporate board of Energy Transfer Partners only two weeks after ending his term as governor. Kelcy Warren has been a major backer of Perry's political career, contributing $6 Million to Perry's 2016 campaign for president. This made Warren the 6th largest politcal donor in the US at the time.

Rick Perry Is Still on the Payroll of a Controversial Pipeline Company, Mother Jones

When Rick Perry was the governor of Texas his appointees at the state’s environmental agency interfered and censored references of climate change and sea-level rise in Galveston Bay in an environmental report, and unsurprisingly sparked revolt among scientists who contributed to this report.

Rick Perry officials spark revolt after doctoring environment report, The Guardian

Kevin Brady, a representative of the state’s 8th District and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, received $15,000 from the Energy Transfer Partners PAC. Republican Representative Brady voted YES on “opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling” and “barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases” in 2011, and voted NO on “enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution” in 2009 and “tax credits for renewable electricity, with PAYGO offsets” in 2008.

Kevin Brady on Energy & Oil

Pete Olson, a representative of the state’s 22nd District and a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, received $12,000 in donations from Energy Transfer Partners. Olson is a vocal opponent of controls on emissions of greenhouse gases and the Paris climate treaty. He voted YES on “opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling” and “barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases” in 2011, and voted NO on “enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution” in 2009.

‘The Wild West Of Money In Politics’: Dakota Access Pipeline Builder Spends Millions To Influence, Mint Press News

Pete Olson on Energy & Oil

In 2016 election cycle, Energy Transfer Partners raised $634,400 and spent $366,300. Total Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates is $130,500, and 3% of the contributions goes to Democrats and 97% goes to Republicans. In 2014 election cycle, the Dallas-based energy giant raised $598,219 and spent $581,317. Total Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates is $320,999, and 21% of the contributions goes to Democrats and 79% goes to Republicans.

In 2016 election cycle, all recipients at the House: Open Secrets - Energy Transfer Partners

ENVIRONMENTAL VIOLATIONS AND POLLUTION

After co-founded Energy Transfer Partners with Ray Davis in 2005, the company quickly became one of the most prominent American natural gas and pipeline companies, as well as one of the nation’s top 20 polluters. ETP  has reportedly accrued over $22 million in penalties for environmental violations since 2010 alone. Sunoco Logistics (SXL.N), the company merged with Energy Transfer Partners and the future operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has an unmatchable records of oil spills. According to EPA’s records, Sunoco has 31 records of environmental violation merely since 2010.

Bloomberg - Kelcy Warren

Political Economy Research Institute - Energy Transfer Partners

Violation Tracker - Energy Partner

EPA - SUNOCO

Sunoco Company Website

Kelcy Warren has been called “shady” by the Motley Fool after a failed merger with Williams, Co in 2015, and the publication listed ETP as one of two dividends stocks to never buy.

When ETPs CFO Jamie Welch stepped down in early 2016, Welch sued Energy Transfer Equity for breach of contract.

CLOSE FINANCIAL TIES WITH DONALD TRUMP

Warren has been a noted Trump supporter and has close financial ties with Trump. According to campaign finance disclosure records, Warren donated $3000 to Trump’s campaign directly, and another $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that includes the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party of Arkansas and the Connecticut Republican Party.

Warren has also donated $66,800 to the Republican National Committee after Trump secured the nomination.

Trump is also directly invested in Kelcy Warren’s company, Energy Transfer Partners. This year, Trump disclosed between $1,500 and $50,000 in investments in the primary builder of the pipeline, Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners. This figure is down from the $500,000 to $1 million in investments he disclosed in 2015.

He also disclosed between $100,000 and $250,000  in investments in Phillips 66, which would own one-quarter of the Dakota Access Pipeline once completed.

ACCUSATIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

Energy Transfer Partner’s Dakota Access Pipeline remains highly controversial, especially in its methods of land acquisition. Their landowner FAQ page indicates that both land surveying and contracts between ETP and landowners are voluntary, but if a mutual agreement to have one’s rightfully owned land cannot be made, then ETP clarifies that they will pursue action through the courts to move forward with land surveying, and the landowner will pick up the tab.

Dakota Access Pipeline Landowner Facts

Opponents of the pipeline point out that though the project was re-routed for public safety when authorities originally deemed it to pose a hazard to the drinking water in the majority-white city of Bismarck, the new route takes the pipeline (DAPL) through another populated area -- a Sioux reservation.

Haunting video shows protesters of all ages being shot with rubber bullets and water cannons. Young and old have been grievously injured by police responding to DAPL protest.

The violent response to peaceful water protectors have led many to ask whether the government has violated constitutional law and treaties, and international human rights standards for treatment of protesters. Energy Transfer Partners have made no effort to intervene even in the face of brutalities such as the release of police attack dogs on indigenous children.

In Texas, protesters are also calling for Warren to be arrested.

Dakota Access pipeline: 300 protesters injured after police use water cannons, The Guardian

Pipeline protests put Kelcy Warren in the spotlight and bull's-eye, Houston Chronicle

On January 24, 2017, President Trump signed a Presidential Memoranda to urge “the relevant Federal agencies (including the Army Corps of Engineers) to expedite reviews and approvals for the remaining portions of the Dakota Access Pipeline”

FOOL ME ONCE: A DEADLY PATTERN OF EXPLOITING COMMUNITIES OF COLOR FOR PROFIT

Kelcy Warren spent the majority of 2016 in conflict with the mayor and community members of Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras regarding another construction project he initiated without approval from local authorities, and nine years ago his private security forces were responsible for the death of three teenage ladino islanders and serious injury of eleven others.

The Roatan Electric Company (RECO) is the primary energy provider to Roatan, which serves as capitol city to the wealthy Honduran department of the Bay Islands. The departments of Honduras are somewhat analogous to states or provinces. RECO was originally founded by residents as a user-owned utility cooperative, but was declared insolvent in 2007 and put under emergency management. It was then bought out by Kelcy Warren in 2008 through a public private partnership with ENEE, a nationally-owned power company of Honduras. Warren went on to abandon the cooperative structure, privatizing the company and by extension its profits, a transition which abruptly limited the power of Roatan’s energy consumers. RECO is simply no longer accountable to the public in the way it was when its public users actually owned the company.

RECO Company Website

Energy & Infrastructure - RECO

WARREN’S PRIVATE SECURITY TEAM KILLS 3 LOCAL TEENS ON HIS PRIVATE ISLAND, INJURE 11 MORE

As of 2005, Kelcy Warren owns the majority of Barbareta, which has essentially become his private island east of Roatan. Residents have expressed concern about changes in ownership of the island leading to suppression of the cultural enjoyment of the environment.

Oscar Mejia, congressman with the left-leaning Democratic Unification Party expressed deep concern over the practice of selling islands to foreigners. Mejia used Kelcy Warren’s purchase of Barbareta as an example of how such sales not only compromised the Honduran constitution, but also posed potentially deadly consequences for locals.

Boat Rams Another, Killing Three, Bay Island Voice

Congreso investigara venta de islas a extranjeros, Laprensa

According to the Bay Islands Voice, Warren’s private security guards killed and critically injured 14 young islanders of ladino ethnicity who were fishing near his estate on the island of Barbaret in 2007. Relatives of the deceased publicly considered charging Warren with the deaths, and apparently had garnered enough public support for this campaign that elected officials began openly espousing discomfort of the implications on foreign relations that would come with charging a wealthy American businessman with such a crime.

Barbaret’s falling out, Bay Island Voice

The liability was ultimately pinned solely on the security employees, and not the man paying them to “guard” the island. Media reports offer absolutely no indication of any threat of violence from the fishermen which could have inspired the attack. Warren’s private security killed 3 teen boys, putting one in a coma, causing another to lose an eye, and injuring 9 others--all for fishing. Police statements to the press indicate that, by their analysis at that time, the act was premeditated.

Prior to becoming a private island, locals had regularly enjoyed the coral reefs and lush fishing areas of Barbaret.

Waren’s RECO holds an effective monopoly over Roatan’s energy supply, a claim which by itself has raised concerns from local government. First, RECO insists that it is “the only company that can distribute and generate electricity on the island of Roatan,” though Mayor Ebanks stated that RECO must abandon its scheme to monopolize Roatan’s energy grid and prepare to compete with other providers. Secondly, the diesel powered energy supplied by RECO is dirty.

Residents have long been protesting against outmoded diesel fuel storage tanks kept in their residential areas. The local government has asked RECO to move the tanks.

yay rare win? FAIL

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/14/energy-transfer-racketeering-claims-greenpeace-dakota-access-pipeline-dismissed

A North Dakota federal judge dismissed Energy Transfer’s racketeering lawsuit against Greenpeace and all its co-defendants in a sharply worded ruling issued today, finding that the pipeline builder’s allegations fell “far short of what is necessary to establish a [racketeering] claim.”

In August 2017, Energy Transfer filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act civil complaint against Greenpeace and other environmental groups who had opposed the company’s Dakota Access pipeline, claiming that the protests had caused $300 million in damages (and requesting three times that amount from the defendants).

Today’s ruling flatly rejected Energy Transfer’s claims.

“Donating to people whose cause you support does not create a RICO enterprise,” District Judge Billy Roy Wilson wrote in a terse 12-page opinion dismissing all state and federal claims in the suit. “Posting articles written by people with similar beliefs does not create a RICO enterprise.”

The company labeled opponents “eco-terrorists” in its 187-page complaint, DeSmog reported at the time; Greenpeace responded that the lawsuit should be considered a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (a so-called SLAPP suit) and was nothing more than an attempt to deter legitimate organizing work.

Other civil society organizations agreed with Greenpeace’s stance.

“Defendants employed time-honored, lawful means to advance their views, protected by core constitutional rights of free speech and association,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief objecting to Energy Transfer's (then Energy Transfer Partners, or ETP) claims of racketeering, defamation, and conspiracy. “Under ETP’s theories, ordinary political speech that runs counter to a corporation’s business interests could expose the speaker to enormous, unwarranted liability.”

Judge Wilson ruled today that Energy Transfer’s lawsuit could not go forward, dismissing all of the federal claims with prejudice (so that they cannot be re-filed), writing that “any additional amendments [by the plaintiff] would be futile.” He also dismissed the state claims, though without prejudice.

Energy Transfer said it planned to pursue futher action in state court, given that the federal judge had declined to hear their state law claims. “We are disappointed, but because the judge dismissed the state claims without deciding their merits, we intend to quickly pursue those in the appropriate venue,” Lisa Dillinger, an Energy Transfer spokesperson, said in a Friday email to DeSmog.

The federal judge dismissed Energy Transfer’s allegations of “wire fraud and mail fraud” in a single sentence. “There appear to be problems with both causation and the fact that most (if not all) of the alleged ‘false and sensational’ claims are either subject to debate, matters of opinion, or inconsequential.”

The judge’s Valentines Day 2019 ruling describes the case’s history, observing that claims against two of Greenpeace’s co-defendants were dismissed in July. Plaintiffs then added individual defendants, named in today’s ruling as “Greenpeace’s employee Charles Brown, and alleged protesters Cody Hall, Krystal Two Bulls, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya.”

“This is a huge victory not just for Greenpeace but for anyone and everyone who has ever stood up against powerful corporate interests,” Greenpeace USA General Counsel Tom Wetterer said in a statement.

“Today’s decision to dismiss Energy Transfer's baseless lawsuit against Greenpeace and others sends a clear message to companies trying to muzzle civil society that corporate overreach will not be tolerated,” he said. “It is also a check on corporate efforts to silence dissent.”

The ruling comes just one month after RICO claims against Greenpeace by Resolute Forest Products –- a case also filed by attorneys from Kasowitz Benson Torres (a law firm used by President Donald Trump) – were similarly dismissed in January.

Greenpeace hailed the federal court decision as showing that, in their words, “[j]ustice has been served.”

“We must and will continue to hold Energy Transfer accountable for its corporate behavior on current risky pipeline projects like Bayou Bridge,” Wetterer said, referring to the Energy Transfer oil pipeline being built in Louisiana, “where the company is continuing to use private security to intimidate protestors and has aggressively used eminent domain laws to secure land.”

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racketeering suit ~ GP!?

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2018/09/20/dakota-access-pipeline-developer-defends-racketeering-claims/

no lnx

Dakota Access pipeline developer defends racketeering claims

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and BLAKE NICHOLSON |

PUBLISHED: September 20, 2018 at 3:47 pm | UPDATED: September 25, 2018 at 11:26 am

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The company that built the Dakota Access oil pipeline says environmental group Greenpeace should be held legally accountable for violating federal racketeering laws.

Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners sued Greenpeace and two other groups for up to $1 billion last year, arguing they worked to undermine the $3.8 billion pipeline that’s now shipping oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Greenpeace recently asked to be dismissed from the case, after a federal judge dismissed the other two groups. But the company argued this week that there was plentiful evidence of “malicious criminal conduct” by Greenpeace.

In court documents filed Tuesday, company attorneys allege that Greenpeace knowingly disseminated false information about the pipeline to obtain donations and incite unrest, including to company lenders and investors to hurt ETP financially. The company also alleges the environmental group organized and funded a violent protest faction in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

“Defendants’ RICO enterprise comprised three related components,” ETP attorney Jennifer Recine wrote in the court filing, arguing that Greenpeace was employing similar tactics against ETP pipeline projects in Pennsylvania and Louisiana.

Greenpeace argued in its dismissal request this month that ETP’s claims were “generalized and implausible.”

ETP filed the lawsuit last year against Earth First, BankTrack and three Greenpeace groups — Greenpeace, Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund.

The groups argued the lawsuit was an attack on free speech.

But in the documents filed Tuesday, Recine argued that ETP wasn’t trying “to limit anyone’s exercise of any legally protected conduct.” Rather, the company is seeking “to vindicate its own legal rights in the face of the Greenpeace defendants’ malicious criminal conduct.”

U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson dismissed BankTrack and Earth First as defendants in the case this summer. He said ETP failed to make a case that Earth First is an entity that can be sued. The judge said BankTrack’s actions in imploring banks not to fund the pipeline did not amount to radical ecoterrorism.

In July, Wilson denied a motion by Greenpeace to be dismissed. But he also ordered ETP to revise the lawsuit, which the judge said contained vague claims. Company lawyers did so last month.

Groups and American Indian tribes who feared environmental harm from the pipeline staged large protests that resulted in 761 arrests in southern North Dakota over a six-month span beginning in late 2016.

Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter:

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/24/greenpeace-energy-transfer-oil-spills-pipeline-protesters-violence

Battles over new shale gas and oil pipelines involving Energy Transfer, formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners, have heated up in recent weeks — an escalation that carries a tilt, as one side stands accused of acts of violence.

Energy Transfer (ET) security contractors have been accused of physically assaulting pipeline opponents on multiple occasions, including incidents in which security allegedly pointed a gun at one pipeline opponent, struck another with the butt of a shotgun, and overturned two boats carrying a television film crew and pipeline opponents into a Louisiana swamp, according to a new report published by Greenpeace USA on October 18.

Pipeline opponents also ratcheted up their protests, as three women from communities impacted by ET projects interrupted an ET shareholder meeting and activists carrying signs locked themselves to gates outside the company CEO’s residence.

New Name, Same Risks?

Energy Transfer Partners, or ETP, is the company behind controversial oil and gas pipeline projects like the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), the Bayou Bridge pipeline, and Mariner East. Last week, ETP finished a business deal that left the company with a new corporate name and a new stock symbol. The new firm, Energy Transfer Equity, trades under the stock symbol ET.

The Greenpeace report, published the same day as that business deal, calls attention to ET’s continuing record of what the report called “concerning corporate behavior” — not only spills and accidents, but also efforts to silence or criminalize critics.

“Despite this new business model, Energy Transfer continues to display behavior that indicates a lack of significant changes with regards to the company’s approach to civilian opposition to its pipeline projects,” Greenpeace wrote.

What’s behind that opposition? Greenpeace describes Energy Transfer's record of spills and mishaps, writing “Energy Transfer and subsidiaries have reported 15 hazardous liquids incidents so far in 2018.”

“These 15 incidents led to the release of 1,282 barrels of hazardous liquids (of which 609 barrels were recovered),” the report adds, “and caused a reported $8.4 million in property damage.”

Energy Transfer and the Courts

The report also highlights ET’s use of the court system to jail critics like Ellen Gerhart, a Pennsylvania landowner sentenced this summer to two to six months incarceration after ET claimed she had violated a court order.

And it provides an update on a racketeering complaint filed by ET against Greenpeace and other pipeline opponents in August 2017, which described an alleged $300 million in damages done by the defendants and asked the court for three times that amount. ET’s complaint alleged that the DAPL protests involved “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 and other purported misconduct, inflicting billions of dollars in damage.”

In an August 2018 order, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson ordered ET to revise its complaint. “Energy Transfer has failed to state plausible RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] claims against Greenpeace,” Judge Wilson wrote. “It has also failed to comply with basic rules of pleading.”

Noting that ET’s court filings offered lots of insinuation but few identifiable facts, Judge Wilson continued, “This Circuit consistently requires pro se parties [people who have no lawyer and represent themselves] to plead with more clarity, and less irrelevant hyperbole, than present here.”

In its October update, Greenpeace writes that ET used that amendment to expand its original complaint by naming five individuals as defendants, including “a recently hired Greenpeace USA employee.”

The Greenpeace report, titled “Still Too Far,” also calls attention to so-called “critical infrastructure” bills that are under consideration in Pennsylvania and Ohio and just went into effect in Louisiana, which would turn many criminal charges at pipeline protests into felonies carrying prison sentences of over a year. It notes that ET has ongoing pipeline construction projects in all three states (other states are also considering similar laws, which appear to be based on a model ALEC bill).

“From leaky pipelines and reckless actions against peaceful demonstrators to a clear disdain for the First Amendment, Energy Transfer hasn’t shown any signs of engaging in meaningful change,” said Greenpeace USA Global Finance Pipeline Lead Diana Best. “The company’s decision to continue with its controversial business as usual should raise an alarm for any remaining financial institutions with ties to the company.”

The report, which includes photographs taken by Julie Dermansky, comes shortly after the NN Group, an investment fund managing $275 billion, announced that it would withdraw investments in ET and a group of tar sands oil companies and pipeline builders, citing not only pollution and climate change worries, but also human rights concerns.

During an October 18 shareholder meeting, three prominent opponents to ET pipeline projects — Ellen Gerhart, a Pennsylvania landowner who lives along the route of Mariner East; Cherri Foytlin, an activist who bought land on the Bayou Bridge pipeline’s route in 2016; and Waniya Locke, a water protector from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation — interrupted discussions.

A Facebook live video of the event posted by Cherri Foytlin has over 42,000 views. Protesters also gathered outside the shareholder meeting in Dallas, Texas, and locked themselves to the gates of the Dallas home of Kelcy Warren, ET’s CEO

...

energy Transfer recently found itself facing allegations of endangering the safety of pipeline opponents after an ET security boat allegedly caused two other boats carrying a group of members of the press (including a Comedy Central film crew) and protesters with L’eau Est La Vie Camp to overturn into a Louisiana swamp through which the pipeline is being constructed.

DeSmog has previously reported on ET’s use of a private security firm called TigerSwan, which was denied a license to operate in Louisiana earlier this year over continuing lawsuits against the firm from its role on behalf of Energy Transfer in the battles over the Dakota Access pipeline. Greenpeace previously alleged that TigerSwan “deployed excessive force and military style counterterrorism tactics against Water Protectors while operating without a license in North Dakota.”

Energy Transfer rejected the allegations in the Greenpeace report. “Our priority is the safe construction and operation of our assets,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to DeSmog. “We value the local communities and environments in which we work, which is why our employees and contractors spend years designing and constructing these projects. To claim anything different is incorrect. “

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https://www.ecowatch.com/energy-transfer-pipeline-explodes-pennsylvania-2604024050.html

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Karen Savage, an award-winning investigative reporter, did not expect to be arrested as she covered Energy Transfer Partners’ controversial construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline through Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, a river swamp bigger than the Florida Everglades.

“We were on land that the pipeline company doesn’t even claim to have,” she said, adding that she had permission in writing from the property owner to be there. “I didn’t think there was really any risk at all.”

Savage, a freelance reporter who teaches at the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism, has previously covered the BP oil spill and environmental justice issues. Truthout describes her as “embedded” with L’eau Est La Vie protest camp, which opposes the pipeline.

She now faces “critical infrastructure” trespass charges, as do over half a dozen others recently arrested near Bayou Bridge construction. These felony charges come under a newly minted Louisiana law modeled after “critical infrastructure” laws in other states, which have been criticized as efforts to criminalize oil and gas pipeline protests.

Louisiana’s first felony trespass arrests came on August 9, when three people kayaking through waters adjoining Bayou Bridge construction were charged under the new law, according to pipeline opponents who said the kayakers were paddling in public waterways. And three more people were arrested the same day as Savage, according to Truthout.

Early Monday morning, a Bayou Bridge activist who identifies as a “water protector” was tased and arrested after being forced from a “skypod,” a device similar to the tripods sometimes used in civil disobedience campaigns. That person was charged and held on $10,000 bail, according to a statement put out by local activists.

Like many who opposed Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, Bayou Bridge opponents identify themselves as water protectors. Some of those opposed to Bayou Bridge have engaged in tree-sits as a form of civil disobedience.

Trespassing Near 'Critical Infrastructure'

Traditionally, trespass charges are relatively low-level crimes often punishable by little more than a fine.

The law turning trespassing — if it’s near “critical infrastructure” or construction sites for critical infrastructure — into a felony carrying a sentence of up to five years went into effect on August 1. It specifically amended the Louisiana criminal code to include oil and gas pipelines under the definition of “critical infrastructure,” and included “conspiracy” charges to enter or damage these sites with harsh penalties both in terms of prison time and fines.

Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Bayou Bridge pipeline, supported the bill elevating “critical infrastructure” trespassing to a felony, a local ABC News affiliate reported in April.

Another ALEC Bill Now Law

The Louisiana law is similar to a bill pushed nationwide by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded bill mill whose members include oil and gas companies like Chesapeake Energy and Continental Resources. Energy Transfer Partners has twice supported ALEC’s annual conferences, according to Sourcewatch.

Part of the reason that trespass charges are rarely serious is that it can be a complex legal issue to sift out who exactly owns a piece of land, especially if ownership is disputed. The owners of land where Bayou Bridge construction is currently underway have said that the company never obtained an easement or seized their property through eminent domain, meaning that they believe the construction is illegal.

Bayou Bridge opponents predicted that the bill would be used to target their campaigns — particularly if there’s a risk of being arrested for a felony even when you reasonably believe you are not trespassing.

“Clearly the purpose is to chill lawful dissent,” New Orleans-based environmental activist Meg Logue told The Advocatein April.

Other reports of police misconduct and the blurring of the lines between public officials and private security at Bayou Bridge sites drew a warning from lawyers from three prominent civil liberties organizations in late July.

Police stood by while company “[c]onstruction workers [used] chainsaws on the very trees these individuals are sitting in,” William P. Quigley, law professor and director of the Loyola Law Clinic; Pam Spees, senior staff attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights; and Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center wrote in a July 28 letter to Louisiana’s governor. “We also have reports that various state employees from the Department of Public Safety, Corrections, and Probation and Parole are working as private security in this matter.”

DeSmog has previously reported that legislatures in at least three other states have begun considering laws similar to ALEC’s model bill. So far this year, “critical infrastructure” bills have passed either the state House or Senate in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Similar bills have also been introduced in states including Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Minnesota, and Colorado and Washington state have also considered related measures.

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wotus pipelines?

https://www.ecowatch.com/bayou-bridge-pipeline-louisiana-2566981602.html

Louisiana State Court Declares Bayou Bridge Pipeline Permit Illegal

A Louisiana judge recently ruled that the state regulators violated guidelines when it issued Energy Transfer Partners' controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline a coastal use permit.

The permit was issued for the last 18-mile stretch of the fracked oil pipeline that would have run through the riverside town of St. James Parish, where dozens of refineries and industrial facilities are already fueling a public health crisis in the mostly African-American community.

The proposed 162-mile Bayou Bridge pipeline would connect the contentious Dakota Access Pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico.

As noted by the Bridge the Gulf Project, the judge ruled that the permit granted by the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) was illegal because it did not take into consideration the impacts the project would have on the town.

In his April 30 decision, made public on Monday, 23rd Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Turner Jr. held, "Once constructed, this pipeline has the potential to impact some of Louisiana's most coveted and ecologically sensitive areas such as the Atchafalaya Basin, as well as other wetlands through Louisiana."

He also wrote, "the permit application does not include an emergency response plan nor does it address potential spills that may occur after construction once the pipeline is operational."

Among other decisions, the court ordered DNR to require the pipeline builders "to develop effective environmental protection and emergency or contingency plans relative to evacuations in the event of a spill or other disaster."

The plaintiffs include St. James residents, H.E.L.P. association, the Gulf Restoration Network, the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Bold Louisiana. They were represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic.

"Here in St. James, we are in desperate need for an evacuation plan that will allow us to get out fast when something spills or explodes," said Genevieve Butler, resident of St. James and petitioner in the lawsuit, in a statement received by EcoWatch.

"More facilities keep coming, and each one puts us at more risk, but none of them want to do anything about our situation. Well, now Bayou Bridge has to step up. I hope all the others see this ruling as a sign that they have to give our community the protection we deserve."

Pastor Harry Joseph of Mt. Triumph Baptist Church and another petitioner added, "It seems like the state agency didn't think too much about the people who live here when it was giving Bayou Bridge this permit, and neither did Bayou Bridge. So we went to court, to somebody who we felt would listen to us, and he did."

...

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/17/energy-transfer-partners-pipelines-leaked-once-every-11-days-greenpeace-report

5,475 days, 527 pipeline spills: that's the math presented in a new report from environmental groups Greenpeace USA and the Waterkeeper Alliance examining pipelines involving Dakota Access builder Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). It's based on public data from 2002 to 2017.

All told, those leaks released 3.6 million gallons of hazardous liquids, including 2.8 million gallons of crude oil, according to data collected from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

That doesn't include an additional 2.4 million gallons of “drilling fluids, sediment, and industrial waste” leaked during ETP's construction of two pipelines in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Also left out: air pollution and leaks from natural gas pipelines, which were beyond the scope of the new report but which play a significant role in climate change and can cause explosions.

Across the entire industry, hazardous liquid pipelines spilled a total of 34.7 million gallons during the past decade, directly causing 16 deaths and $2.7 billion worth of damage. More than one in ten of those gallons came from ETP.

“That’s a red flag for a company that has an extensive network across the country and is building even more pipelines as we speak in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and other states,” said Greenpeace USA research lead Tim Donaghy, PhD. “ETP and Sunoco's track record of spills, including several striking examples of big spills, are indicators of a constant threat to communities and water. This could happen again to communities along the pipeline routes.”

A Long List of Spills and Accidents

ETP spilled crude oil over 400 times, “refined petroleum products” such as gasoline 92 times, and other flammable or toxic fluids 27 times, the researchers found. And many of the spills involved large amounts of oil — roughly one in four of ETP's pipeline oil spills involved 2,100 or more gallons of oil.

In one 2005 incident, 436,000 gallons of crude oil spewed from a tank farm into a Delaware River tributary outside Philadelphia. That same year, a pipeline built in the 1950s dumped enough oil into the Kentucky and Ohio river to leave a 17-mile oil slick. And in 2009, a Texas pipeline caught fire and leaked over 140,000 gallons near Colorado City, Texas.

Cleaning up those sorts of spills is no easy job. Out of 3.6 million gallons ETP spilled, almost half — a total of more than 1.5 million gallons — was never mopped up, the report found. In addition, the company caused $115 million in property damage, according to federal tallies.

Sunoco, which merged with ETP, is included in the report's analysis. In 2012, ETP first merged with Sunoco, formally absorbing pipeline-wing Sunoco Logistics Partners in 2017. The combined companies operate over 70,000 miles of U.S.pipes. That's “nearly long enough to encircle the earth three times,” the report notes.

The new report finds that ETP's pipelines have a somewhat higher-than-average rate of problems. Twelve percent of ETP's spills polluted water sources, finds the report, titled “Oil and Water: ETP and Sunoco's History of Pipeline Spills.” That's compared against a 10 percent national average. And three out of eight incidents nationwide where PHMSA specifically noted harm to drinking water supplies involved ETP pipelines.

The pipeline industry's record has grown worse over time, the report notes, reaching a peak of 454 spills in 2015 before dropping “slightly” to 404 in 2017.

Bayou Bridge Pipeline

The company's controversial pipeline construction projects across the U.S. include the Bayou Bridge pipeline that would tie in to the Dakota Access pipeline and carry oil from North Dakota's Bakken shale down to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mariner East 2 pipeline that will carry the plastic precursor ethane across Ohio and Pennsylvania to the Atlantic coast, and the 713-mile Rover pipeline, that will transport natural gas through Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, where millions of gallons of drilling fluid have spilled during construction.

The Bayou Bridge pipeline's route through wetlands and drinking water supplies for over 300,000 people has community and environmental advocates particularly concerned.

“Construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline represents a high risk to hundreds of waterways across the entire state of Louisiana,” said Waterkeeper Alliance Clean and Safe Energy Campaign Manager Donna Lisenby.

The new report warns that if ETP's track record remains unchanged, the Bayou Bridge pipeline will experience multiple spills of 2,100 gallons or more of hazardous materials after it's built. “Assuming the U.S. system-wide rate for significant crude oil spills of 0.001 per year per mile, we estimate that the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would suffer eight significant spills during a 50-year nominal lifetime,” the report concludes. Photographs of Bayou Bridge construction taken by photojournalist Julie Dermansky, who has reported on Bayou Bridge for DeSmog, are included in Greenpeace's report.

“We're not happy with Bayou Bridge because we know that Energy Transfer Partners is accident prone,” said Harry Joseph, a pastor from St. James, Louisiana, where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will terminate. “We fear that something will happen in St. James — it's just a matter of time because of ETP’s history. The company has had problems.”

Sinkholes, Spills, and Suing

Those fears will sound familiar to some Pennsylvanians living near the Mariner East 1 and 2 pipelines, where the new report tallied over a hundred “inadvertent releases” and accidents, some of which contaminated locals' water wells, polluted local trout streams, or even caused massive sinkholes to open up. One of those sinkholes erupted just 300 feet from railroad tracks where Amtrak trains and local commuter rail operates, prompting the state to issue an emergency shutdown.

Many living near Mariner East's path are concerned about the risk of more accidents. “This is an organic farm,” West Cornwall farmer Phil Stober told ABC News, “and if it damages our groundwater, what recourse do we have?”

The company's most notoriously controversial project was, of course, the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), where an encampment by people calling themselves “water protectors” in Standing Rock, North Dakota, drew national attention as law enforcement used attack dogs, tear gas, and high-pressure water cannons in subzero temperatures against Indigenous peoples and allies who opposed DAPL construction.

“We all recall the Dakota Access pipeline construction process because of the inspiring resistance from Indigenous communities that wanted to protect their water,” said Greenpeace's Donaghy. “Those Water Protectors were right; that pipeline alone leaked four times in 2017.”

An additional three incidents along the full stretch of the Dakota Access-Energy Transfers Crude Oil pipeline were also reported to federal authorities, including a roughly 5,000 gallon oil spill in Tennessee.

Other ETP pipeline construction projects that have had a lower national profile also caused major spills. The Permian IIExpress pipeline dumped 361,200 gallons of crude near Sweetwater, Texas, in the largest pipeline leak of 2016.

Last August, ETP sued Greenpeace, BankTrack, and Earth First!, claiming that anti-pipeline advocates were engaged in racketeering against the firm and demanding $900 million in damages. Greenpeace is currently defending against those charges in court and argues that the case is what's known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suit, aimed at silencing discussion of harms caused by ETP. (This month, a federal judge effectively dropped Earth First! from that lawsuit, following arguments that Earth First! is a philosophy and not actually an organization. ETP had attempted to hold a magazine called Earth First! Journal liable as representing Earth First!) The lawsuit against Greenpeace is still ongoing.

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/13/critics_of_bayou_bridge_pipeline_in

in Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners.

This comes just one week after a U.S. district judge in Baton Rouge ordered a temporary injunction against construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline in order to “prevent further irreparable harm” to the region’s delicate ecosystems, while court challenges proceed. For more, we speak with Pastor Harry Joseph of the Mount Triumph Baptist Church. We also speak with Pamela Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigad

==

https://www.alternet.org/environment/former-senator-exposed-major-conflict-interest-over-pipeline-approval

From Dakota Access to Keystone to Atlantic Coast, there has been no shortage of controversies over major proposed oil and gas pipelines in recent years. We can add the Bayou Bridge Pipeline to this list.

Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66’s Bayou Bridge Pipeline is a proposed connection to ETP’s Bakken Pipeline network that will ship between 280,000 and 480,000 barrels of crude oil per day through southern Louisiana’s bayous and wetlands to petroleum refineries in Lake Charles.

The pipeline is facing committed resistance, both from environmental activists concerned about climate change and the impact of inevitable pipeline leaks and accidents on the environmentally sensitive Atchafalaya Basin, as well as from the communities of people whose homes and ways of life are threatened by the project.

On the other side are the oil and gas corporations that stand to profit from building the pipeline, the banks seeking interest payments on loans to oil and gas companies, and the politicians and academics dependent on oil and gas industry largesse for their careers.

PAI’s latest report, "The Power Behind the Pipelines: Bayou Bridge Pipeline," examines the interests pushing Bayou Bridge despite the substantial public opposition.

Former Senator Mary Landrieu working for ETP and key environmental regulator

The most shocking find in our investigation was that Mary Landrieu, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana, has been working as a consultant for Energy Transfer Partners touting the pipeline in public testimony and in print media at the same time as she is registered as a lobbyist for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which needed to approve Bayou Bridge before the project could move forward.

It is not entirely clear whether Landrieu is being paid by Energy Transfer Partners, and if so, how much. She is not registered to lobby on behalf of ETP at the state or federal level, however, the former senator identified herself as a consultant for the firm in an article endorsing the pipeline and reportedly told protesters that “she would support the project even if she wasn’t working for the company.”

At the same time, Landrieu is registered to represent the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, one of the final remaining regulatory agencies to approve of Bayou Bridge, to the federal government.

These dual roles—working both for an environmental regulator and an energy company with a project that must be approved by the regulator—pose an extraordinary conflict of interest.

Landrieu is a powerful politician who served in the US Senate for 18 years and whose family is heavily involved in Louisiana politics. During her time there, she received more than $1.7 million from the oil and gas industry, including $41,400 from Energy Transfer Partners. Her formidable connections and conflicting positions raise questions of whether she may be influencing CPRA on behalf of ETP.

map]

Our other most notable finding was that two banks—US Bank and DNB Capital—that had pledged they would stop financing ETP’s Dakota Access Pipeline after public pressure on them to do so were lending to the companies behind Bayou Bridge.

In the case of US Bank, after Food & Water Watch’s Hugh MacMillan revealed the banks financing Dakota Access spurred a pressure campaign that included a banner drop at a Minnesota Vikings game at US Bank Stadium, the bank announced to great accolades that it would cease “project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines.”

Crucially, US Bank did not pledge to stop lending to the companies building pipelines but merely pledged to stop financing individual projects. This distinction is academic, however, since corporate debt is, in fact, financing pipeline construction. In its most recent annual report, Energy Transfer Equity, ETP’s parent company, said that ETP’s credit facility would provide “temporary financing for growth projects,” which includes Bayou Bridge.

In December 2017, eight months after their announcement US Bank joined other banks in two new agreements to lend up to $5 billion to Energy Transfer Partners, the main company behind Dakota Access and the majority owner of Bayou Bridge. US Bank is also party to credit agreements to lend up to $5.75 billion to Phillips 66.

DNB Capital, a Norwegian bank which had been a member of credit agreements with Energy Transfer Equity and both Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners before their merger, announced that it would sell off its loans to Energy Transfer Partners “to signal how important it is that the affected indigenous population is involved and that their opinions are heard in these types of projects.”

However, DNB Capital remains party to credit agreements with Phillips 66, which is a 25 percent owner of Dakota Access and a 40 owner of Bayou Bridge.

The banks’ announcements about pulling financing from Dakota Access show that public pressure campaigns like Mazaska Talks have had an impact, however, the fact they are still finding ways to finance pipeline construction that threatens the environment and the sovereignty of indigenous people shows that the promise of oil profits still has major allure.

map of banks

...

For more information on the power behind Bayou Bridge Pipeline—including other politicians backing the pipeline, the major investors like Blackstone and Berkshire Hathaway invested in the companies behind it, and the significant conflicts of interest at Louisiana State University which published a report touting the pipeline—see the full report, available at the Public Accountability Initiative website.

https://www.ecowatch.com/rover-pipeline-spill-2526282302.html

Rover Pipeline Spills Another 150,000 Gallons of Drilling Fluid Into Ohio Wetlands

Energy Transfer Partners' troubled $4.2 billion Rover pipeline has spilled nearly 150,000 gallons of drilling fluid into wetlands near the Tuscarawas River in Stark County, Ohio—the same site where it released 2 million gallons in April.

The 713-mile pipeline, which will carry fracked gas across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan and Canada, is currently under construction by the same Dallas-based company that built the controversial Dakota Access pipeline.

Horizontal directional drilling work to lay the pipe beneath highways and rivers was temporarily halted in the wake of the major April spill, but work was allowed to resume in December. Energy Transfer Partners said it is continuing to follow a plan approved by the federal government and the state EPA, WOSU reported.

According to Kallanish Energy, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency inspected the horizontal directional drilling site on Jan. 10 and reported 146,000 gallons of drilling fluids "lost down the hole," referring to the pilot hole installation under the Tuscarawas River. Three attempts to seal the hole have failed, the state agency said. No inadvertent returns have been detected.

...

https://www.ecowatch.com/us-bank-dapl-2519145269.html

U.S. Bank Quietly Joins $4B Deal With Dakota Access Owner After Declaring End to Oil and Gas Pipeline Loans

By Sharon Kelly

At a shareholder meeting this past spring, U.S. Bank announced it would be the first large American bank to completely stop issuing loans for oil and gas pipeline construction projects.

Environmental groups, indigenous activists and divestment advocates hailed U.S. Bank's announcement as a triumph.

Yet that triumph—and the bank's commitment—seems less sure with the news that U.S. Bank has entered into a new $4 billion loan deal with the company behind the contentious Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).

For months, the bank had been under fire for financing the Dakota Access pipeline by providing over a quarter billion dollars worth of funding to its builder, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Environmentalists famously dropped a banner calling on U.S. Bank to divest from DAPL at the New Years 2017 Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears football game.

The language of the bank's new policy seemed blunt.

"The company does not provide project financing for the construction of oil or natural gas pipelines," U.S. Bancorp, parent company of U.S. Bank, wrote in its April 2017 Environmental Responsibility Policy.

Divestment advocates cheered. "We applaud this progressive decision from U.S. Bank," an Honor the Earth representative said in a statement, as the bank's new policy made headlines.

Some advocates remained skeptical, however, pointing out that the line of credit extended to Energy Transfer Partners wouldn't be covered by that language, because it could be considered a loan for the company as a whole, not the more specific "project financing." And U.S. Bank's CEO told shareholders that his bank wouldn't end its existing Energy Transfer Partners deal, saying that instead it would "fulfill that contract and commitment."

"We know there are always loopholes through which banks will try to pass off responsibility," Rachel Heaton of Mazaska Talks and a Muckleshoot Tribe member told Yes Magazine, "but we will continue to resist until these banks completely divest from all pipeline and fossil fuel corporations and incorporate the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous peoples into their corporate lending structures."

Even if that specific contract wasn't going to be torn up, environmental groups hoped that in the future, the bank would limit its funding of fossil fuel projects.

CEO Andy Cecere "strongly implied that the bank would pull back from pipelines and ETP in particular—aside from its obligations under its 'contract with ETP' (i.e. its existing credit facility)," Brant Olson, Program Director at ClimateTruth.org, told DeSmog.

U.S. Bank's new environmental policy added that any new deals the bank did with companies in the oil and gas pipeline industry would have to undergo additional scrutiny, including a look at their environmental record.

"We want to confirm that a firm's policies and processes are sound and effective as they relate to the environment and the community in which it operates," the policy adds. "In accordance with our environmental responsibility commitment, we prohibit relationships with customers who participate in any illegal activities."

Transferring More Money to Energy Transfer Partners

That's why it was so striking when Energy Transfer Partners quietly announced in a Dec. 1 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that U.S. Bank was part of ETP's new $4 billion credit deal.

ETP's projects include numerous controversial fossil fuel pipelines nationwide, including not only Dakota Access, but also Mariner East 2, Rover, Bayou Bridge, and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil pipeline.

Asked whether Energy Transfer Partners had passed muster during the additional due diligence in U.S. Bank's much-lauded environmental review policy, U.S. Bank's spokesperson Cheryl Leamon declined to comment. "As a matter of policy, we do not discuss customer relationships," she told DeSmog in an email.

Environmentalists hoped that this was a chance for U.S. Bank to end its dealings with ETP. StopETP.org, a coalition of national and local environmental and indigenous rights groups, wrote a letter to the bank in November, urging it to use the chance to cut ties with ETP, which was seeking to renew its $4 billion credit line in a deal involving numerous major banks.

But U.S. Bank has apparently refused, said Food and Water Watch senior researcher Dr. Hugh MacMillan, "after having scored praise back in May for its new pipeline finance policy."

U.S. Bank did not respond when asked about the types of law-breaking that might cross the line and cause a borrower to fail the bank's new due diligence requirements.

Illegal Activities

The bank's professed wariness of fossil fuel companies had drawn an angry response from the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance, which had fired off a letter to U.S. Bank protesting the new policy. "This creates the presumption that firms and people involved in these areas, including those providing construction, equipment, materials, services or other support to these operations, are more likely than all others to be 'bad actors'," the trade group wrote, "thus requiring a higher level of scrutiny."

That additional environmental record review was widely expected to be particularly bad news for Energy Transfer Partners, which has an environmental record that includes more than 300 pipeline incidents in the past decade, causing over $67 million dollars in property damage, according to data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

"From January 2010 through June 2017, ETP spilled hazardous liquids near water crossings more than twice as frequently as any other pipeline company in the United States this decade [and w]as responsible for almost 20 percent of all hazardous liquid spills near water crossings," a recently published report by the Waterkeeper Alliance noted.

In November, one of Energy Transfer Partners' pipeline projects was was sued by Ohio's Environmental Protection Agency over 13 violations of the state's environmental laws, including spewing millions of gallons of drilling fluid into the state's wetlands.

"Among other things, ETP has caused seven industrial spills during the construction of the $4.2 billion natural gas pipeline through Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan," Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr. and Maria Cantwell, ranking members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Energy and Natural Resources, respectively, wrote in a July 27, 2017 letter to federal regulators decrying ETP's track record on complying with environmental laws.

The company's spill record has even drawn concern from investors, with The Street reporting, "'Energy Transfer seems to have an approach where they stick to the minimum requirements instead of exceeding them,' Genscape natural gas analyst Colette Breshears said."

Sunoco Logistics, which merged into ETP last year, had the worst oil spill record of any company in the industry, a 2016 Reuters investigative report found.

==

https://www.alternet.org/environment/energy-transfer-partners-company-behind-dakota-access-pipeline-strong-armed-landowners

Four Pennsylvania residents filed a federal lawsuit this week against Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), claiming the Fortune 500 company and its subsidiaries violated their constitutional rights by engaging in illegal surveillance and harassment against landowners and pipeline protesters and caused emotional distress and other harm.

The suit, which seeks compensatory damages, also names ETP's private security provider, North Carolina-based TigerSwan, as well as local law enforcement officers who arrested pipeline opponents on charges that ultimately were not prosecuted. It claims that energy companies like ETP are increasingly relying on de facto public-private partnerships with government to "strong-arm" opponents into silence with false arrests and malicious prosecution.

"Since May of 2015, every day of my life has been affected by the plans to build this pipeline, and the lengths that Energy Transfer Partners will go to in the pursuit of profit," said plaintiff Elise Gerhart, who lives on property that will be crossed by the pipeline. "We've been needlessly harassed by agencies and violently threatened by individuals who've been intentionally incited and mobilized."

The lawsuit centers on ETP's Mariner East 2 pipeline project that would carry fracked gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions of West Virginia, Ohio and western Pennsylvania to refineries near Philadelphia, with much of the product to be exported overseas for making plastics. ETP is also behind several other controversial petro pipeline projects including the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana, the Trans-Pecos in Texas and the Dakota Access in North Dakota, the target of massive demonstrations last year in which Native American protesters and their supporters faced attack dogs, rubber bullets, mace and water cannons. Pipelines are a growing concern across the South: Of the 56 interstate pipeline projects that have sought permits from federal regulators since 2013, 31 run at least partly through Southern states.

Elise Gerhart's mother, Ellen Gerhart, also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, has owned a 27-acre property in central Pennsylvania's rural Huntingdon County with her husband, Stephen, since 1983 and has cared for it according to the principles of the state's forest stewardship program, which encourages private landowners "to implement sound forest management practices." In 2015, Sunoco, which has since merged with ETP, filed a declaration of taking in county court in order to gain access to a wooded part of the property to begin clearing trees for the planned pipeline. The court granted the company's request in March 2016, establishing an easement on the property and barring the Gerharts from interfering with access. There's currently a lawsuit working its way through the state courts over whether the taking was legal; it comes at a time of growing controversy over how pipeline companies are gaining access to private lands.

At the time the court granted Sunoco/ETP access rights to the Gerhart property, the Mariner East 2 project had neither the necessary state permits for construction nor what's known as "possessory interest" in the easement, which wasn't granted by the county court until April 2017. The lawsuit claims that, without possessory interest, the company had no legal right to exclude anyone from the easement — but that's not what happened.

Arrest to silence?

In late March 2016, shortly after the court granted the easement, the Philadelphia-based environmental advocacy group Clean Air Council posted a public event to Facebook encouraging people to oppose the tree-cutting planned for the Gerhart property. On March 29, 2016, dozens of protesters arrived and set up an encampment, with some sitting in trees to block their removal.

Agents of ETP/Sunoco bearing chainsaws also arrived on the land, escorted by state police and officers from the local sheriff's department. They were eager to begin work as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations prohibit cutting trees on the Gerhart property after March 31 to protect migratory birds and an endangered bat.

Three of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were arrested that day:

Protester Alex Lotorto of Milford, Pennsylvania, claims he was using a walkie-talkie to let other protesters know where the tree cutters were but law enforcement officers accused him of using it to disrupt work at the site. Arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and criminal contempt, he was held on a $200,000 bond he could not afford to pay and stayed in jail for three days. Once the tree-cutting stopped on April 1, his bond was reduced to $5,000 unsecured and he was released.

Protester Elizabeth Glunt of Altoona, Pennsylvania, entered the easement only briefly to warn tree cutters that they were getting too close to tree-sitting protesters, according to the lawsuit. She was charged with disorderly conduct and criminal contempt. Held in jail until her family raised the money to pay her $100,000 bond, Glunt was strip-searched and claims she suffered emotional distress as a result.

The lawsuit states that Ellen Gerhart approached but did not enter the easement area to warn tree cutters that they were too close to tree sitters. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and indirect criminal contempt and released on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

Just over a week later, on April 7, 2016, Ellen Gerhart was arrested again on the same charges when tree cutters returned to her property unannounced and she approached them to warn that they were violating federal wildlife regulations. Elise Gerhart was also arrested for climbing a tree and charged with disorderly conduct.

Smears of Russian ties

All of the charges against the plaintiffs were ultimately dismissed. The lawsuit says that's because the arrests weren't part of a legitimate pursuit of justice but rather an effort to "arbitrarily and maliciously send a message to the Gerhart family and their supporters to discourage their opposition to the pipeline and its construction and thereby chill their First Amendment rights."

The lawsuit also takes aim at TigerSwan, ETP's private security provider, based in the town of Apex near Raleigh, North Carolina. The company was founded in 2008 by retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Delta Force operator James Reese.

According to company documents obtained by The Intercept, an investigative news outlet whose reporting is cited in the lawsuit, TigerSwan's tactics against pipeline protesters in five states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Texas — included military-style counterterrorism measures such as aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, and infiltration of camps and activist circles.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say similar tactics are being deployed against Mariner pipeline opponents, who cite helicopters and drones flying low over the Gerhart property outside of the easement, and unmarked vehicles parking nearby and shining high-beam lights onto the land. TigerSwan has been operating in Pennsylvania at least since April 2017.

The suit further charges that ETP and TigerSwan have repeatedly sent an agent to the Gerhart property to attempt to infiltrate the protest encampment. While there, the lawsuit says, the agent took photos that were later posted to the Facebook page of a shadowy group called PA Progress to identify Ellen and Elise Gerhart. Other PA Progress posts called Elise Gerhart an "anarchist" and falsely accused her of sabotage. The lawsuit suggests that the page, which has since been taken down, was connected to TigerSwan.

The campaign against the protesters also deployed misleading propaganda in other ways. For example, the chair of TigerSwan's advisory board, retired Army Major General James "Spider" Marks, had an op-ed published on the news website PennLive.com in May warning that Mariner pipeline opponents would engage in violence and cause environmental damage. However, he did not identify his connection to TigerSwan and its interest in the pipeline project. The website has since added a note to the op-ed disclosing his position and stating that Marks' work will not appear there again.

The lawsuit further claims that the Gerharts were the targets of misinformation spread online, which it also connects to TigerSwan. For example, it points to posts at Black Badger Report — a pseudonymously written website that claims to be concerned about the proliferation of "fake news" but whose front page features just six stories since June, all of them critical of pipeline protesters except for one condemning The Intercept of Communist ties — falsely accused Elise Gerhart and other protesters of being fronts for Russian government attempts to disrupt U.S. energy markets. The lawsuit ties the online attacks to TigerSwan through a web of internet connections involving TigerSwan Vice President Derek Borror.

The inaccurate posts not only caused "reputational harm," the lawsuit says, but "have incited commenters to threaten to injure or kill Elise Gerhart and her supporters," which in turn have caused her "mental anguish and emotional distress."

The plaintiffs are asking for a jury trial. Neither ETP nor TigerSwan responded to a request for comment.

Sue Sturgis

==

$250K inaugural

==

Kelcy Warren, the main force behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, founder of Energy Transfer Partners, is worth USD 7.3 billion, according to Bloomberg, Dakota Access Pipeline quietly purchased 6,000 acres last week of private ranch land near to Camp of the Sacred Stone – the historic Cannon Ball Ranch, which begs the question of how the purchase was made possible. Energy Transfer Partners donated USD $304,200 in 2016 and USD 581,300 in 2014 to political campaigns. [in ND?]

http://hpr1.com/index.php/feature/news/gray-eminence-the-power-behind-dakota-access/

==

oct 2016

HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top executive at the company behind the embattled Dakota Access Pipeline has donated more than $100,000 to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump since June, according to campaign finance disclosure records.

The donations by Kelcy Warren, chairman and chief executive officer at pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners, support the candidate seen by many as more likely to promote the U.S. oil and gas industry than his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Warren donated $300 to the Trump campaign during the primaries, and $2,700 to Trump during the general election phase of the campaign, for the maximum contribution allowed by a single individual during an election.

He also gave $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that includes the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party of Arkansas and the Connecticut Republican Party.

The donations, first reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, were made before the U.S. government halted construction on a segment of Energy Transfer Partners' 1,100-mile (1,770-km) Dakota Access Pipeline in early September following protests by Native American and environmental groups.

The project, which would move oil from the highly productive Bakken shale formation to the Midwest and Gulf Coast, sparked violent clashes between security officers near the construction site and Native American tribe members and other protesters. Opponents have said the project will damage burial sites considered sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and pollute the area's drinking water.

Warren has also given $66,800 to the Republication National Committee since Trump secured the nomination for the Nov. 8 election, The Guardian reported.

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/10/headlines/ohio_epa_fines_energy_transfer_partners_over_18_pipeline_spills

==

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00438754&cycle=2016

$500K plus 2014, 2016

Total Receipts $634,373

Total Spent $366,259

Begin Cash on Hand $126,423

End Cash on Hand $394,537

Debts $0

Date of last report December 31, 2016

2016 PAC Contribution Data

Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates (list recipients)

(3% to Democrats, 97% to Republicans) $130,500

Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more( list donors) $490,153

Official PAC Name:

ENERGY TRANSFER EMPLOYEE MANAGEMENT COMPANY PAC (ENERGY TRANSFER PAC)

Location: AUSTIN, TX 78701

Industry: Oil & Gas; Natural Gas transmission & distribution

Treasurer: RUCKEL, KENDALL G

FEC Committee ID: C00438754

(Look up actual documents filed at the FEC)

Total Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates

(3% to Democrats, 97% to Republicans) $130,500

House

Total to Democrats: $2,500

Total to Republicans: $95,500

Recipient Total

Angelle, Scott (R-LA) $5,000

Brady, Kevin (R-TX) $10,000

Costello, Ryan (R-PA) $2,500

Cramer, Kevin (R-ND) $5,000

Curbelo, Carlos (R-FL) $1,000

Denham, Jeff (R-CA) $2,500

Fitzpatrick, Brian (R-PA) $2,000

Flores, Bill (R-TX) $2,500

Graves, Garret (R-LA) $5,000

Johnson, Bill (R-OH) $5,000

LaHood, Darin (R-IL) $2,500

Latta, Robert E (R-OH) $0

Loebsack, David (D-IA) $2,500

Marchant, Kenny (R-TX) $2,500

Meehan, Patrick (R-PA) $5,000

Mullin, Markwayne (R-OK) $4,500

Olson, Pete (R-TX) $7,000

Petri, Scott (R-PA) $2,000

Pitts, Joe (R-PA) $1,500

Ryan, Paul (R-WI) $5,000

Scalise, Steve (R-LA) $5,000

Shimkus, John M (R-IL) $5,000

Shuster, Bill (R-PA) $5,000

Upton, Fred (R-MI) $7,500

Young, David (R-IA) $2,500

Senate

Total to Democrats: $1,000

Total to Republicans: $31,500

Recipient Total

Boozman, John (R-AR) $3,000

Boustany, Charles Jr (R-LA) $2,500

Coons, Chris (D-DE) $1,000

Grassley, Chuck (R-IA) $2,500

Hoeven, John (R-ND) $5,000

Kennedy, John (R-LA) $5,000

Lankford, James (R-OK) $5,000

Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) $5,000

Portman, Rob (R-OH) $1,000

Toomey, Pat (R-PA) $2,500

Based on data released by the FEC on February 08, 2017

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/12/pipelines-of-funds-support-allies-of-dapl/

When the Army Corp of Engineers announced Sunday it would block construction of an essential part of the Dakota Access Pipeline Project and study alternative routes, thousands of protestors at the site — members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, environmentalists, veterans and others — joined hands in jubilation.

Concern about potential damage to the tribe’s sacred lands and leaks that could poison the water supply led to the outcry; a semi-permanent encampment of RVs, teepees and tents sprang up in recent months as the ranks of the objectors grew.

But they’re not breaking camp just yet. The forces behind the $3.8 billion pipeline, which is expected to carry Bakken Shale oil from northwest North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to an oil reserve in Illinois, have a lot of sway with President-elect Donald Trump, who could order the Corps to reverse course, and those around him. Trump indicated his support for the pipeline, including the segment that has triggered the controversy, on Monday.

North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D), who has been mentioned as a possible Interior secretary under Trump,has avoided taking a position of the pipeline per se, but encouraged the protestors to go home: “When you look at it, we know one thing for sure: When the administration changes, the easement is going to be approved,” Heitkamp said Monday. “I understand the frustration of the protesters, I just think that this fight is not winnable.”

A member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Heitkamp and her leadership PAC have raised $8.7 million since 2011, with $277,879 from the oil and gas industry. That includes $1,500 from the political action committee of Energy Transfer Partners, which owns Dakota Access, LLC, the key player in the project.

Fellow North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven (R), who recently came out supporting the pipeline, also received $5,000 from the PAC during his re-election campaign this cycle. With seats on the Energy and Natural Resources and Indian Affairs committees, Hoeven’s single biggest financial supporter throughout his senatorial career has been the oil and gas industry, which has given his campaign $673,030 since 2011.

In total, Energy Transfer Partners’ PAC donated $128,000 to federal candidates this in the 2016 cycle.

Trump’s interest in the pipeline has been more than just tangential: His 2015 financial disclosure report showed he owned Energy Transfer Partners stock valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. Trump’s latest financial report, filed in May 2016, shows he reduced his investment to somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000, but also revealed an investment in Phillips 66 of between $100,000 and $250,000. Phillips 66 owns about 25 percent of the pipeline, making it the biggest partner in the project after ETP. Trump sold all his shares in companies in June, including the investment in ETP, according to his spokesperson, though no documentary evidence of that has been shared.

Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren showed his strong support for Trump in late June by donating $100,000 to his joint fundraising committee, $3,000 of which went straight to his campaign.

Like many big donors this cycle, Warren flirted with other presidential prospects first, most notably former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The pro-Perry super PAC Opportunity & Freedom I got a $5 million donation from Warren soon after Perry announced his bid last year — but Warren received a refund after Perry dropped out of the race a few months later. Perry, it turns out, is on the board of Energy Transfer Partners. National Republican party committees also received $203,400 from Warren this election cycle.

At the state level, Warren donated $250,000 to Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) in this election cycle and $10,400 to Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, who oversees public utilities in the state. Angelle, the onetime head of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, is a board member of Sunoco Logistics Partners, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer and one of the smaller owners of the pipeline project. Angelle faces a run-off election for Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District seat on Saturday, and his single biggest supporter has been the oil and gas industry, which has contributed $103,150 so far.

Warren doesn’t skimp: He has donated over $2.4 million to candidates, parties and committees at the federal level since 2007 and $1.7 million at the state and local level in the last decade.

Energetic support

Heitkamp is only the latest addition to the list of oil executives and pro-development politicians being considered to run the Interior Department, overseeing the nation’s wildlife and natural resources.

Trump’s key energy advisor and Continental Resources CEO Harold G. Hamm, in particular, has been the mastermind of the energy policies of the president-elect.

Hamm and his wife Sue Ann Hamm have donated nearly $1.9 million to federal candidates and committees over the years. This election cycle, individuals (including the chief executive) and the political action committee of Continental Resources donated $15,226 to Trump as well as $10,300 and $10,200 to Heitkamp and Hoeven, respectively. The oil billionaire who was at the forefront of the fracking boom in North Dakota was also considered a leading contender for the top job at the Department of Energy, but recently denied any plans to join Trump’s cabinet.

In a Wall Street Journal column published Monday, another key energy adviser to the Trump campaign, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) — who also received $7,400 from Continental Resources this year — censured the protesters. He, too, counts the energy and natural resources sector as his biggest source of financial support, especially the oil and gas industry: The sector has given his campaign and his leadership PAC $932,925 throughout his congressional career, including his unsuccessful 1996 campaign. Oasis Petroleum, whose well leaked more than 67,000 gallons of crude oil last year, endangering a tributary around the Missouri River, topped Cramer’s donors, giving $68,500. North Dakota-based Armstrong Corp and Koch Industries also have given Kramer $32,800 and $33,000, respectively.

While members of Congress have voiced their views on the high-profile project, the permitting process has mostly been in the purview of the states. Both the Iowa Utility Board and the North Dakota Public Service Commission have been key here.

Unlike IUB members, who were all appointed by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, the three North Dakota public service commissioners — Julie Fedorchak, Randy Christmann and Brian Kalk — were elected to their six-year terms and boasted strong financial support from the energy and natural resources sector. Combined, they brought in a total of $117,550 from those interests. The North Dakota Petroleum Council forked over a total of $15,900 to the three. Hamm, of Continental Resources, gave them $1,000 each.

And energy and natural resources donors have been crucial to Branstad, too, accounting for over $1 million out of $1.8 million total contributions to the governor since 2010.

Unfortunately for protesters, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not the only pipeline plan that could be revived by the new administration.

Cramer — formerly a North Dakota Public Service Commissioner who helped approve the original Keystone Pipeline in 2010 — has been a leading voice in reviving the fourth phase of the Keystone project, which would add North Dakota and Montana to its route.

Called the Keystone XL, the pipeline proposal was a top election issue in 2014. The Obama administration rejected it last year, but Trump says he backs it to free America from dependence on foreign oil. Beneficiaries of the pipeline would be American oil moguls operating in the region, like Hamm and the Koch brothers.

Keystone XL’s biggest owner, TransCanada, appears to be stepping up its political game. Contributions from the company’s employees and PAC jumped from $4,600 in the 2014 cycle to $243,226 this time around. Ohio Gov. John Kasich received $11,000, while Cramer and Trump received $5,000 and $4,136 each. Even Hillary Clinton, who publicly opposed the extended pipeline, received contributions totaling $1,639.

Categories: Campaign finance Congress Congressional Committees Environment Oil & gas Politicians & Elections

Tags: b3, Continental Resources, Dakota Access Pipeline, energy transfer partners, harold hamm, Heidi Heitkamp, John Hoeven, Kelcy Warren, Keven Cramer, Keystone Pipeline, north dakota, Rick Perry, Scott Angelle, soorin kim, transcanada

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...Trump has not spoken about the DAPL but holds stocks that are directly funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. According to Trump's financial disclosure forms, The Guardian reported that he has invested between $500,000 and $1 million in Energy Transfer Partners.

The ardent supporter of fossil fuels wants to bring back the Keystone XL and announced plans to undo President Obama's climate change and environmental policies.

Warren said he has "never met" Trump but has donated $103,000 to his presidential campaign. He believes the DAPL will result in cheaper oil and more jobs.

Warren, however, brushed off any leak concerns: “I'm not gonna win that argument with you because pipelines do leak. It's rare. I think the chances of this pipeline leaking is extremely remote."

The Texas businessman went on to say that the protestors "will not stop our project, that's naive."...

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fac so:

Over the Labor Day weekend, security guards for a petro pipeline company used attack dogs and pepper spray against Native Americans resisting construction of a $3.8 billion pipeline through North Dakota, a project they say is desecrating land sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and putting critical water supplies at risk of contamination.

If completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude from the nearby Bakken oilfields to Illinois, where it would meet an existing pipeline that would transport the oil to Texas. That's the home state of the billionaire and major Republican political donor behind the project: Kelcy Warren, chair of Energy Transfer Equity of Dallas, a company that's No. 65 on this year's Fortune 500 list.

The controversy around the Dakota Access Pipeline made a personal visit to Warren last week, as about 200 protesters, many of them Native Americans, showed up outside his company's Dallas offices for a demonstration. Organizer Yolanda Bluehorse of the American Indian Movement of Central Texas told the Dallas Morning News that the protestors "hope the big billionaires and higher ups can see us."

So who is Kelcy Warren?

A native of East Texas and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in civil engineering, Warren worked in the natural gas industry and became co-chair of Energy Transfer Equity in 2007. With business partner Ray Davis, co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, Warren built Energy Transfer Equity into one of the nation's largest pipeline companies, which now owns about 71,000 miles of pipelines carrying natural gas, natural gas liquids, refined products and crude oil. The company's holdings include Sunoco, Southern Union and Regency Energy Partners.

Forbes estimates the 60-year-old Warren's personal wealth at $4 billion. Bloomberg described him as "among America's new shale tycoons" — but rather than building a fortune by drilling he "takes the stuff others pull from underground and moves it from one place to another, chilling, boiling, pressurizing, and processing it until it's worth more than when it burst from the wellhead."

Warren lives in a 27,200-square-foot castle in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of north Dallas, a community that had restrictive covenants in place until 2000 limiting it to white people only (except for domestic servants). The neighborhood is also home to former President George W. Bush.

Warren owns the Lajitas Golf Resort along the Rio Grande near the Mexican border as well as Music Road Records, a roots label that operates recording studios in Austin and Cherokee, Texas. Warren's musical model is singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, who this week put out a statement opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline and announcing that he'll donate all proceeds from a tribute album of his songs released by Music Road Records to tribes fighting the pipeline:

I did not know anything about Kelcy Warren's other business as the production of this album went forward. Although as a music publisher there is no legal way to deny permission to a record company to cover a song that has been previously published, I could have dissuaded the artists from appearing on this record had I known. I routinely vet the companies who ask me to perform for them. I do not play for oil interests. I do not play for companies who defile nature, or companies who attack demonstrators with trained attack dogs and pepper spray. The list of companies I have denied the use of my music is long. I certainly would not have allowed my songs to be recorded by a record company whose owner's other business does what Energy Transfer Partners is allegedly doing — threatening the water supply and the sacred sites of indigenous people.

Warren has also used his massive wealth to support conservative politicians. So far in the 2015-2016 election cycle, he has contributed over $743,000 to Republican candidates and organizations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database. That includes over $500,000 to the Opportunity and Freedom PAC supporting former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, $97,000 to the Republican National Committee, $79,500 to the Republican National Congressional Committee, and $25,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports GOP candidates.

In addition, Warren has contributed the maximum amount to the campaigns of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Michigan), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Meanwhile, Energy Transfer Partners — part of Energy Transfer Equity's complex business structure — has a PAC that's also a major political contributor, donating over $288,000 so far this election cycle to 23 House campaigns and nine Senate campaigns, according to OpenSecrets.org. Of that amount, only $3,500 went to a total of two Democrats.

The company's PAC is also a major contributor to state politics, having invested over $178,000 in state-level candidates in the last election cycle and over $98,000 so far this election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics' FollowTheMoney.org database. While the bulk of those contributions have been made to GOP candidates in the company's home state of Texas, it's also donated to politicians in the Dakotas among other states. Warren himself is also a major state-level donor, contributing over $950,000 in the last election cycle alone, with most of that going to Republican candidates in Texas.

Whether Warren's political investments will pay off for the Dakota Access Pipeline remains uncertain. Leading the opposition to the project are the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation is near where the pipeline crosses from North Dakota into South Dakota and who use water from the Missouri River, which the pipeline will pass under, for irrigation and drinking. They have the support of 60 American Indian tribes as well as environmentalists, human rights advocates and farmers.

This week a federal judge ordered a temporary halt to some of the construction. He said he expects to rule by the end of Friday on the Standing Rock Sioux's challenge of federal regulators' decision to grant permits for the project.