An activist fights the wind while walking along the Oceti Sakowin camp as blizzard conditions grip the area around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on Dec. 6, 2016. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images via the North Dakota Monitor)
(Mary Steurer – North Dakota Monitor) – The state of North Dakota has asked to become a defendant in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seeking to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The tribe’s complaint, filed last month, accuses the Army Corps of violating federal law by allowing the pipeline to operate without an easement, adequate environmental study or proper emergency spill response plans, among other violations.
North Dakota in a memo filed last week argued that closing the pipeline, often referred to as DAPL, would cost the state government hundreds of millions of dollars, put thousands of jobs in jeopardy and disrupt regional supply chains. North Dakota also argues that a federal court order shuttering DAPL could infringe upon the state’s right to regulate its own land and resources.
The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over a section of the pipeline that passes under Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River, about a half-mile upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation.
Standing Rock opposes the pipeline over concerns that it violates the tribe’s sovereignty, has disrupted sacred cultural sites and endangers the tribe’s water supply.
If a judge were to grant Standing Rock’s request to shutter DAPL, the North Dakota state government would lose out on a projected $900 million in revenue in the first 12 months, Office of Budget and Management Director Susan Sisk said in a statement filed in court.
The state relies on energy taxes to fund a significant portion of its operations, Sisk wrote.
She noted more than 10% of North Dakota’s annual general fund revenue comes from oil and gas taxes, and nearly 60% of the state’s tax and fee revenue comes from oil and gas extraction and production.
DAPL is a big piece of that equation, according to Sisk. She wrote that half of the crude oil produced in North Dakota is transported through the pipeline. If the pipeline went away, that oil could also be transported by rail or truck, but existing infrastructure wouldn’t be able to move it at the same pace as DAPL, she added.
State officials say that energy workers would also be at risk. Shutting down DAPL would cause North Dakota to temporarily lose roughly 8,450 to 9,300 jobs, and permanently lose 1,700 to 2,200 jobs, Department of Mineral Resources Director Nathan Anderson wrote in court records filed by the state.
Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring and Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak also submitted statements in support of North Dakota’s motion to intervene in the lawsuit.
Goehring wrote that if DAPL were shut down, railways would have to make space for up to 800 additional rail cars every day to transport the oil that would have otherwise traveled through the pipeline. This would give the rail system less room to transport North Dakota’s agricultural resources, which Goehring argues would harm the state’s agriculture economy.
The state also claims in court filings that moving oil by rail and truck is not as safe, as it poses a greater risk for air pollution as well as accidents.
Fedorchak noted in her statement that the Public Service Commission invested a significant amount of regulatory resources in DAPL. The route of the pipeline was chosen to minimize safety and environmental risks, to avoid Native and federal land and to align with existing infrastructure, she wrote. The Corps at the time agreed that the chosen route was best, Fedorchak added.
The case is before U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who presided over the tribe’s 2016 lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers challenging the pipeline.
As part of that suit, Boasberg in 2020 instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to complete a more thorough environmental impact study of the pipeline, which is still pending. He also ordered DAPL to stop operating, though an appellate court reversed that decision.
The Army Corps of Engineers published a draft version of the environmental impact statement in September 2023.
In comments on the draft study, North Dakota urged the Army Corps of Engineers to allow the pipeline to continue operating. Many of the arguments the state made defending DAPL in those comments also appeared in the state’s memo in support of its motion to intervene.
The Army Corps of Engineers has not yet filed a response to Standing Rock’s latest legal challenge. North Dakota in its memo states that the Army Corps does not oppose its request to intervene as a defendant.
The more than 1,000-mile pipeline carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois, and has been operating since 2017. Its pathway includes unceded land recognized as belonging to the Sioux Nation under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.
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