Greenpeace has been ordered to pay more than $660 million in damages to the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline after the environmental group was found to have defamed the company and its protestors incited illegal behavior.
The nine-person jury at the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, delivered Wednesday’s verdict in favor of Enegery Transfer, a Texas-based oil giant.
Greenpeace was found liable for defamation, trespass, nuisance, and civil conspiracy, among other acts, in an attempt to prevent the construction of the pipeline more than eight years ago. The group previously warned that it could face bankruptcy if it lost this case.
The activist group accused Energy Transfer of taking aggressive action against protestors and desecrating Native American burial grounds; the oil company claimed that Greenpeace was engaged in a “vast, malicious publicity campaign” against them in an attempt to tarnish its relationships with banks funding the pipeline.
In the wake of the verdict, Greenpeace International Executive Director Mad Christensen pointed fingers at the Trump administration, writing: “We are witnessing a disastrous return to the reckless behavior that fuelled the climate crisis, deepened environmental racism, and put fossil fuel profits over public health and a liveable planet.
“The previous Trump administration spent four years dismantling protections for clean air, water, and Indigenous sovereignty, and now along with its allies wants to finish the job by silencing protest.”
“These are the facts, not the fake news of the Greenpeace propaganda machine,” Trey Cox, the lead attorney representing Energy Transfer, said in a press conference outside the courthouse.
The company also touted the verdict as a “win” for “Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”
It marked a colossal financial blow for the organization, which could now face bankruptcy. According to the latest records, Greenpeace had roughly $40 million in revenue and 191 employees in 2023.
Greenpeace said it intends to appeal the decision, and its senior legal adviser, Deepa Padmanabha, pledged that the organization’s work “is never going to stop.”
The case centered on Greenpeace’s involvement in protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The $3.78 billion project began in June 2016 and was completed in April 2017.
The 1,172-mile-long underground pipeline runs between Bakken in the northwest of the state and Patoka, Illinois, pumping out hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil per day.
The standoff started in early 2016 with dozens of members from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe forming water protector camps, viewing Energy Transfer’s project as a pollution threat and imposition onto Indigenous land.
The camps swelled to as many as 10,000 people at their peak, with protesters stationed for months north of the Standing Rock Reservation, near where the pipeline crosses below the Missouri River in Morton County.
Greenpeace maintains that it only supported activists at the Indigenous-led protests. Some of those who attended the protests testified that the campaign group was not perceived as a leader at the camps.
North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer applauded the decision Wednesday, with the Republican noting that Greenpeace and its “radical environmentalist buddies” can “think twice now about doing it again.”
