Daily Caller
Lawsuit Aims To Hold Environmental Group Accountable For Pipeline Protests

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Marchers protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline
The recent spate of anti-Israel demonstrations at college campuses could cause déjà vu for North Dakotans, who endured the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016. Like many of the campus protests, the pipeline protests were funded and fueled by big outside groups that showed little concern for the damaging impacts of their actions.
Now, a lawsuit being heard this summer is designed to hold some of these groups responsible for their actions. Energy Transfer, the owner and operator of the pipeline, is suing Greenpeace and other alleged instigators for $300 million for the damages sustained by the company as a result of these protests. The lawsuit claims that these environmental activists spent months spreading false information about the pipeline project and helped fund out-of-state agitators who attacked law enforcement and damaged property during the protests.
As it relates to the North Dakota controversy, the lawsuit alleges a Greenpeace misinformation campaign began with mass emails falsely claiming that the Dakota Access Pipeline would travel across the sovereign land of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, that it would destroy “sacred Native Lands,” and was being approved without proper environmental reviews.
Energy Transfer says none of the claims made by Greenpeace were accurate. It says the pipeline does not cross any Standing Rock land, and the company had made 140 different modifications to its planned route to avoid potentially impacting any culturally important sites. An independent review by the North Dakota Historic Preservation Office later concluded the pipeline affected no historic properties.
Furthermore, the pipeline was approved after years during which multiple environmental studies and reviews were conducted. Pipelines can actually play an important role in improving environmental outcomes because there is a greater likelihood of spills and leaks from other transportation methods like railroads, trucks and barges.
The lawsuit alleges that lies spread by Greenpeace attracted thousands of protesters to North Dakota who soon formed massive encampments.
Energy Transfer claims Greenpeace also helped provide nearly a half-million dollars and additional training to another group of protesters tasked with using violence to stop or delay the pipeline. Greenpeace allegedly continued to support these activities, even organizing fundraising drives across ten cities to collect supplies for the members of the Red Warrior Society. The lawsuit alleges that, in November 2016, members of the encampment raided Energy Transfer property, then lit fires and attacked police with grenades and flares.
In the aftermath of the protests, the suit alleges Greenpeace and its allies left with millions of dollars raised from the protests and their publicity. Meanwhile, North Dakotans were left with the bill to clean-up the environmental disaster of human waste, trash, and abandoned animals left in the encampments. And while the Dakota Access Pipeline was completed, Energy Transfer claims it lost significant amounts of money due to destroyed equipment, security costs, and project delays.
Energy Transfer’s lawsuit seeks to hold Greenpeace and others accountable for these alleged actions. Protesters and the groups that fund them have rights, but so do the individuals and companies who they unfairly malign and attack. The case could be an important reminder to organizations and protesters that free speech is constitutionally protected, but inciting and funding violent actions is not.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Daily Caller
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.
Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”
API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.
While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.
Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.
The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.
What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.
Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.
Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
conflict
‘They Don’t Know What The F*ck They’re Doing’: Trump Unloads On Iran, Israel

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
President Donald Trump expressed frustration Tuesday after Iran broke a ceasefire, prompting retaliation from Israel during a gaggle with reporters on the White House lawn.
Trump announced the ceasefire Monday, saying it was supposed to take effect at 1 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, but Iran fired missiles at Israel Tuesday. Trump vented, saying the countries had been “fighting so long” they couldn’t make peace.
WATCH:
“You know, when I say okay, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour just drop everything you have on them,” Trump said. “So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn’t land, I’m not happy about that.”
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don’t know what the fuck they are doing,” Trump added.
The United States struck facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan related to Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons early Sunday morning local time, using as many as 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators in the operation, which involved a 37-hour flight by seven B-2A Spirit bombers.
The American strikes came ten days after Israel launched a military operation targeting the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has responded with repeated missile attacks on Israeli cities and a refusal to resume negotiations over its efforts to pursue nuclear weapons.
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