During a summer 2015 rally against tar-sands crude pipeline construction, participants of the No KXL Dakota multicultural coalition held a water blessing ceremony in the South Dakota state capital. Photo by Native Sun News

TransCanada to Lakota pipeline opponents: ‘We’re back!’
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor
www.nsweekly.com

PIERRE –– No sooner had tribal and other land-based people decried South Dakota’s Jan. 5 permit renewal for TransCanada Corp.’s now defunct Keystone XL Pipeline than did the company announce it will sue for $15 billion of taxpayers’ money.

The suit is because U.S. President Barack Obama denied a federal permit for the Canadian company to build the pipeline across the international border between Alberta Province and Montana. The decision came in November, after a seven-year review process, in which officials responded to arguments of Lakota, Dakota, Nakota and allies, deeming that the private export infrastructure was not “in the national interest” of the United States.

TransCanada Corp. announced on Jan. 16, that it has taken legal action under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and also has initiated Constitutional litigation against the U.S. Administration in Houston federal court for “arbitrary and unjustified” denial of the company’s wishes.

The would-be investors said they still want to build the 1,179-mile line to pipe tar-sands crude, or diluted bitumen (dilbit), from the boreal forests of Athabascan ancestral homelands in Canada through 1851 and 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty Territory in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

The project would link the tar pits to infrastructure the company already built from Nebraska to Texas, so industry can refine the product and ship it abroad from ports on the Gulf of Mexico.

However, members of the grassroots No KXL Dakota multicultural coalition said the litigation indicates that the company is planning to abandon its plans in lieu of compensation for earnings it expected from the pipeline.

Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: TransCanada to Lakota pipeline opponents: ‘We’re back!’

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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