Oil begins to flow through Line 3 on Friday, but the fight continues

Oil will begin to flow through the controversial Line 3 pipeline Friday, after years of legal challenges and resistance that have seen more than 900 arrests since construction began in November.

The owners of the pipeline, Canadian company Enbridge Energy, said in a statement declaration this week that the 1,097-mile (1,765-kilometer) pipeline was “largely complete” and could begin transporting oil from Canada via North Dakota and Minnesota to the company’s terminal in Wisconsin. A project vice-president told the AP that much of the remaining work was cleaning and that the pipeline is expected to reach its maximum capacity of 760,000 barrels of oil sands per day later this month. But there are still ways to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Always, tThis moment marks a dark setback for the pipe resistance, which galvanized people across the country. The The indigenous-led protests focused on lands crucial to the Anishinaabe tribes, including sensitive wetlands. Tar sands oil is incredibly difficult to clean in the event of a spill. The pipeline would also lock in decades of additional fossil fuel use, further destabilizing the climate. The oil it would transport is particularly damaging, release 17% more carbon dioxide emissions than standard crude oil.

“Enbridge rushed to build this line before the Federal Court handed down its ruling on our appeals regarding the line, but people did: We believe the most expensive oil sands pipeline ever built. in the United States will be the last ”, Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth and one of the central figures standing against the pipeline, said in a statement where she praised the water protectors who had fought the project.

While the pipeline can be primarily built physically, legally, Enbridge’s phrase “substantially complete” does a lot of work here. Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources $ 3.3 million fine to Enbridge for damaging a sensitive aquifer during pipeline construction in January. The company still faces possible legal action for the violation from Clearwater County, Minnesota, where is the pipeline, which the DNR has ruled violated a law that criminalizes altering or appropriating state waters without a proper permit. Meanwhile, challenges to the pipeline’s permits in federal and tribal courts are still ongoing.

“There are still a lot of unresolved questions,” said Moneen Naismith, an Earthjustice lawyer involved in the case in federal court. “It’s not an easy pipeline navigation by any stretch of the imagination. And it’s not the first pipeline that did this, it is what Dakota Access did. They leave no legal challenge to them. prevent making money from this pipeline. ”

The lawsuit against Dakota Access pIpeline brought in by indigenous groups is still making its way in federal court, more than four years after that pipeline’s owner, Energy Transfer, began moving oil through the pipeline. Naismith explained that, like in the Dakota Access case, the company starting to operate the pipeline cannot change a judge’s decision, but could change the way the court decides on the remedy in the case.

“If they were still building it, the remedy would be: stop building it,” Naismith said. “Now that it is working, the remedy we are asking for is that, if the permit is obtained illegally, you should not be allowed to operate under that permit. The only thing that really changes with Enbridge’s announcement is whether the judge sided with us and concluded that they had to go back and redo the analysis, will the court force- does the pipeline stop in the meantime while the scan is taking place?“

If Dakota Access is any indication, the case could be complicated. A judge ordered the Dakota Access pipeline to stop pumping oil last year after finding the company needed to re-issue a key permit for the pipeline. The Corps said in April, although, that Energy Transfer has been authorized to continue to operate the pipeline while the company has obtained a new license.

Biden administration spoke to the public about its climate commitment. But in court and behind the scenes, his took a pro-fossil stance on Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines. The The Corps’ decision to keep oil flowing through the Dakota Access pipeline came just months after Biden’s sweeping announcement on the first day of his administration that he was cancellation of permits for the Keystone pipeline.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration also took care of defend line 3 in court. In June, the Ministry of Justice issued a brief in response to the lawsuit filed by Earthjustice and others, defending the Trump-era work on the permit and asking the court to reject any further arguments from environmental and indigenous groups and allow the pipeline to move forward.

Despite the will of the administration pro-pipeline stance, it’s still not too late for them to do something about Line 3, especially if Biden wants to prove he’s serious about tackling climate change. As international climate negotiations approach, pressure is mounting on the administration to honor its commitments.

“[The administration’s] the power to cancel that permit doesn’t stop just because the pipeline becomes operational, ”said Naismith. “The power exists under their own regulations if they determine that in the analysis that was done previously, they missed something. We tried to point out to them that they missed a lot of things, including not talking about the climate change impacts of an oil sands pipeline. To say that you take climate change seriously and let it go on is quite contradictory in terms of emissions. “