North Dakota to Receive $28M Federal Settlement for DAPL Protest Costs

The federal government will pay North Dakota nearly $28 million to settle a lawsuit over the costs of policing massive protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline nearly a decade ago, the state's attorney general announced Thursday. According to the Associated Press, the final settlement sum matches the amount a federal judge determined last year after a trial.

Republican Attorney General Drew Wrigley stated the settlement money will finalize the debts of loans taken from the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, making the state "financially whole." In a press conference, Wrigley said the government also agreed to dismiss all of its appeals and issued a statement acknowledging "that the people of North Dakota, including, centrally, our law enforcement officers, endured repeated acts of intimidation, violence, property destruction, unlawful conduct associated with encampments established on federal land without authorization," as reported by the North Dakota Monitor.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a statement, said it disputes the court's legal analysis but "acknowledges in hindsight that, under the Obama Administration, the federal government could have done more to reduce the impacts to the people of North Dakota" from the protests. The department noted the protests included "unlawfulness and confrontational violence" at times and that the choice not to forcibly remove protesters from federal property "had painful consequences for North Dakota and many of its residents."

The lawsuit, filed in 2019, concerned demonstrations against the construction of the crude oil pipeline, also known as DAPL, that took place in rural south-central North Dakota in 2016 and 2017. North Dakota alleged that the federal government caused the protests to grow by unlawfully allowing demonstrators to camp on federal land. U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor found the federal government liable on all claims, including negligence, gross negligence, civil trespass and public nuisance, according to the AP.

Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong welcomed the settlement as "long overdue" and said it "removes the financial burden from North Dakota taxpayers and places it on the shoulders of the federal government where it belongs."

Separately, in a development highlighting continued interest in pipeline infrastructure, Alberta's energy minister Brian Jean said the province is in talks with a Fortune 500 company about financing a major pipeline project. According to Rigzone, Jean stated, "We've had one particular discussion with a proponent, actually a Fortune 500 company, in very general terms about financing the entire project and building the entire project." While not directly related to the Bakken, such large-scale infrastructure financing discussions underscore the ongoing capital demands for energy transport corridors.