Demonstrators in multiple US cities were scheduled to gather outside offices of the US Army Corps of Engineers, banks and energy companies yesterday in the largest protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline since the US government halted the project in September.
More than 200 protests were to take place in a “day of action” called for by indigenous leaders in support of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and in an effort to urge the US Army Corps of Engineers and the federal government to stop the pipeline, said Dallas Goldtooth, a spokesman for the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the organizers.
The US$3.7 billion Dakota Access project has drawn steady opposition since last summer from the tribe, along with environmentalists, who claim it could pollute nearby water supplies and destroy sacred historical sites.
“The purpose is to elevate the issue and to encourage the Army Corps to exert its power to stop this pipeline,” Goldtooth said of yesterday’s protests, at which more than 30 groups, including Greenpeace and CREDO Action, were to participate.
The Army Corps and the US Department of the Interior on Monday delayed a decision on whether to grant an easement to Energy Transfer Partners, the main company behind the pipeline, for an easement to tunnel under Lake Oahe, the water source that is the focus of protests.
Construction of the 1,885km pipeline is about 85 percent complete, Phillips 66, one of the pipeline’s investors, said last week.
The only outstanding construction work to be done in North Dakota is the segment of the line that would run under the lake, Energy Transfer said last week.
Energy Transfer has said the pipeline would be a more efficient and safer way to transport oil from the Bakken shale of North Dakota to the Midwest and onto the US Gulf Coast.
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