Yesterday a group of political extremists broke into an Enbridge pipeline facility in Minnesota and attempted to turn off two oil pipelines. Specifically the company’s Line 3 and Line 4 pipelines, which have a combined capacity of over half a million barrels of oil per day. The company is in the process of replacing the…
ACLU Calls North Dakota Bill Targeting Meddling With “Critical Infrastructure” Unconstitutional
Back in 2016, during the heights of the #NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipelines, a group of left wing activists calling themselves “valve turners” broke into pipeline facilities and, well, turned some valves. One of the valves turned was in North Dakota, along TransCanda’s Keystone line. This was a spectacularly stupid thing to do.…
Doing Bad Things to the Environment in the Name of Environmentalism
Certain very large, very noisy factions of the American left have taken to opposing the construction of pipeline infrastructure vigorously. I’m not just talking about political and legal obstruction. Roadblocking a pipeline by gumming up the regulatory process, or seemingly endless litigation, is one thing. But often these projects are opposed with violence and criminal…
Study: #NoDAPL Activism Cost Backers of the Dakota Access Pipeline Billions
According to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder’s First Peoples Investment Engagement Program, the activism against the Dakota Access Pipeline cost that project’s backers billions of dollars. The headline to an article about the study posted on the UC website states the #NoDAPL movement “cost companies at least $7.5 billion,” with that figure being…
We Should Pay More Attention to Local Journalists, and Less to National Media Outlets
Conservative columnist Eric Erickson makes an insightful point in this piece where he argues, using the Georgia gubernatorial race as a starting point, that local journalists are better at getting stories right than national journalists. I work for a local media company, which employs a lot of local journalists, so maybe I’m just biased in…
Legislature Re-Institutes Tribal Address After It Was Canceled During #NoDAPL Protests
Back in 2016, amid the violent protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, North Dakota state lawmakers opted to cancel the traditional address from a representative of the state’s tribes at their regular biennial session. Each legislative session typically begins with a state of the state address from the governor, an address from the judiciary, and…
Protesters disrupt a meeting of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday, September 11, 2018. Facebook
Angry Pipeline Protesters Use Threats and Shouting to Shut Down Regulatory Meeting on Line 3 Project
Today the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission was set to consider whether or not Enbridge had met certain conditions for regulatory approval of their Line 3 replacement project. Unfortunately the PUC never got to act one way or another because the meeting was shut down by crude, shouting, disruptive thugs who probably look pretty familiar, in…
North Dakota Democrats Schedule Rally With Group Which Supports the #NoDAPL Protesters
According to this report in the Bismarck Tribune, the North Dakota Democratic Party will be holding a rally in Bismarck on Sunday coordinated with the Lakota People’s Law Project (the Renewable Energy Caucus mentioned is, per the FEC, affiliated officially with the Democratic Party). The LPLP is a group which was and still is heavily invested…
One of North Dakota’s Biggest Proponents of the Corporate Farming Ban May Have Inadvertently Triggered Its Demise
Back in 2016, as political extremists demonstrated violently against the Dakota Access Pipeline the owner of the historic Cannonball Ranch – through which the pipeline was constructed – found himself fed up with the situation and sold the land to the company building the pipeline. He continues to ranch there, but the pipeline company now…
The State of North Dakota Should Give This #NoDAPL Protester His Truck Back
The #NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline were, unfortunately, an exercise in violence and political extremism. That said, that the State of North Dakota would use civil asset forfeiture laws to keep the property of a protester acquitted of charges seems an injustice, yet that seems to be exactly what’s happening to New York…