The Dakota Access oil pipeline can remain operating while the federal government conducts a new environmental review, a federal district court ruled Friday in a blow to environmental activists who have long fought the project.
The ruling is a victory for pipeline operator Energy Transfer, which has faced years of legal challenges attempting to force the shutdown of the project.
BIDEN PUNTS ON SHUTTING DOWN DAKOTA ACCESS OIL PIPELINE, ANGERING ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Environmental activists and tribal groups scored a victory last year when a federal district court judge rejected a Trump administration environmental permit for the project and ordered a shutdown of the entire pipeline to empty of oil. However, that ruling was later reversed by a federal appeals court, allowing the pipeline to continue flowing while it undergoes the new environmental review.
In April, the Biden administration declined to adhere to calls from environmentalists and many Democrats to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline.
President Joe Biden pleased environmentalists but drew the ire of labor groups when he rejected the better-known Keystone XL pipeline. But a decision to force a shutdown of Dakota Access, even temporarily, would have been unprecedented because the pipeline is already operating, unlike Keystone XL.
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In the Friday ruling, D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg said the tribal groups hadn’t met the legal burden to warrant a shutdown of the pipeline, and he said the tribal groups must look to the Biden administration for relief.
“The Court acknowledges the Tribes’ plight, as well as their understandable frustration with a political process in which they all too often seem to come up just short,” Boasberg wrote. “If they are to win their desired relief, however, it must come from that process, as judges may travel only as far as the law takes them and no further.”
