Protesters

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would prosecute anyone responsible for damaging the nation’s oil and natural gas pipelines, three weeks after 84 House lawmakers posed a series of questions in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions over destruction by demonstrators.

Sunoco Pipeline LP has asked the Huntingdon County Common Pleas Court for permission to remove landowners and their supporters from a property in southern Pennsylvania where an encampment has cropped up to prevent construction of the Mariner East (ME) 2 natural gas pipeline.

The main protest campsite, Oceti Sakowin, along the route for the final link to be constructed in Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) project in south-central North Dakota was cleared on Wednesday and Thursday following an emergency executive order from North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum setting Wednesday afternoon as the deadline. It was mostly peaceful, although a few protesters were arrested. The head of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Tom Goldtooth, criticized the move as an “unnecessary infringement on the constitutional right of water protectors,” but leaders of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had been urging protesters to disperse for weeks. Opponents said three other campsites for protesters remain in the larger area: Sacred Stone, Cheyenne River and Four Bands.

Based on a supportive memo from the Trump administration last month, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is expected to receive an easement from the U.S. Corps of Engineers (USACE) needed to complete the $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile oil transportation project.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) ordered protesters to disband their camps in North Dakota Saturday as protesters and law enforcement squared off again over construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline.

County sheriff’s officers cleared an expanded encampment of protesters Thursday from private land near the disputed $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline construction corridor in south-central North Dakota.

FERC held its May 19 regular meeting before an audience of staffers and journalists, but no members of the general public, having voted unanimously the day before to make it “open to the public via webcast only.”

One day after the chairman of FERC was forced from a stage at an energy meeting in New York, another contingent of “keep it in the ground” anti-fossil fuel development protesters took aim at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease sale in Colorado on Thursday.

One day after the chairman of FERC was forced from a stage at an energy meeting in New York, another contingent of “keep it in the ground” anti-fossil fuel development protesters took aim at a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lease sale in Colorado on Thursday.