Enbridge’s Line 3 is a pipeline carrying crude oil from Alberta, Canada, through Minnesota, into Wisconsin. It was built in the 1960s and is scheduled for replacement, and construction began in December 2020. However, a coalition of local Tribes is fighting the replacement in Federal Court; the Tribes argue that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not properly evaluate the potential damage to wetlands and waterways in Minnesota, including the impacts of a potential oil spill. Other groups argue the Line is in violation of treaties between the United States and the Anishinaabe and Ojibwe peoples, especially of provisions that grant Tribes sovereignty over the land, and harm their ability to use the land for rice cultivation. This is just one of a number of ongoing disputes between Tribes across the United States and pipeline projects: Keystone XL, Dakota Access, Enbridge Line 5, and others.
These critical, and time sensitive, disagreements contesting Indigenous land rights raise an important related question: Why is the United States government continuing to support pipeline construction projects at all?
The United States became an energy exporter during the Obama and Trump Administrations. Oil production doubled and gas production increased by 60 percent between 2008 and 2019. Pipelines are critical infrastructure to continuing this expansion. If the United States does not rapidly shift to renewable generation—an indispensable step in its decarbonization policy—its continued reliance on oil and gas will create additional pressure on firms and policymakers to continue or even expand pipeline projects. The International Energy Agency has already argued that funding for new oil and gas projects must be halted today if the world is to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and limit temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Opposition from Tribes to new and existing pipeline projects amplifies the voices of climate activists across the world. The Canadian Government’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) report highlighted the role of worker camps on oil and gas projects—the so called “man camps”—as centers of perpetuating violence against and disappearances of Indigenous women. Stop Line 3, a campaign organizing against Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement, has highlighted the State of Minnesota’s calculations showing a cost to society from emissions enabled by the pipeline totaling $287 billion over the project lifespan of 30 years . Stop Line 3 demands decommissioning the old Line 3 and justly transitioning to a “renewable and sustainable economy.” EarthJustice recommends a number of additional steps for the Biden Administration to take that build on the precedent-setting cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline earlier this year, including: cancelling cross-border permits for oil and gas pipelines, directing the Department of Energy to research the climate impacts of exporting liquified natural gas, eliminating the nationwide permit system for pipelines and only permit pipelines on an individual basis, and require a federal review of life cycle emissions from pipeline projects.
But even these steps would be insufficient to do both what Indigenous groups demand and what would help meet regional and international climate goals. Real transformation requires large and sustained investment in the dissemination and production of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, just transition assistance for Indigenous workers who would be affected by the transition, and financial guarantees that empower Tribal governments to take proactive investment of their own, such as the Kayenta Solar Project on Navajo Land. Other legal changes should make it easier for Tribes to own and operate renewable generation without onerous regulations; a 2005 Federal Law enabling Tribes to own wind and solar generation on reservation land has yet to be used in part because it includes a requirement to partner with external parties. This forces Tribes to lease their land to energy developers instead building and owning their own energy sources. Facilitating Tribes’ financial and legal agency to chart their own path would not only be in the spirit of treaties between Tribal governments and the United States, it would represent a meaningful alternative to leverage against pipelines like Line 3.
