Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
Author: Nora Lewis
Suggested Citation:
Lewis, N. (2026). The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/dakota-access-pipeline-dapl
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
Key Takeaways
- Resource extraction and large infrastructure projects that are framed as for the "greater good" (particularly energy projects) often denigrate Indigenous land, culture, and health.
- Government-led cultural and environmental risk assessments are often out of step with Indigenous perspectives, yet are often wielded as comprehensive decisionmaking tools.
- Those who dissent to these projects, particularly Indigenous and marginalized communities, are at heightened risk of violence, surveillance, and disenfranchisement from both government and private forces.
What is the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)?
Background
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,172 mile-long underground pipeline transporting up to 750,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to an oil terminal in Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline, which also runs through South Dakota and Iowa, began its $3.78 billion construction in June 2016 and was completed in April 2017 (Yan, 2016). It is owned by the oil pipeline corporation Dakota Access LLC and operated by another petroleum industry giant, Energy Transfer Partners. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have been the central stewards of the project's construction, overseeing the design, siting, and building processes (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, n.d.). According to developers, "The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is the safest and most environmentally sensitive way to transport crude oil ... to American consumers. It will be among the safest, most technologically advanced pipelines in the world" (Dakota Access Pipeline, n.d.). Despite these promises, the project inflamed widespread protests over its environmental implications and encroachment into areas of cultural significance to the Upper Sioux Tribe (Hu, 2024). The Standing Rock Sioux, which includes members of the Dakota and Lakota nations, argued that the DAPL violated Article II of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, an agreement from 1868 which guarantees "undisturbed use and occupation" of reservation land around the current site of the pipeline (National Archives, 2024). The pipeline's original path crossed the Missouri River closer to North Dakota's state capital, Bismarck, but was rerouted within half a mile of the Standing Rock Reservation over concerns that an oil spill would pollute the city's drinking water supply (Hu, 2024). Opponents highlighted the pipeline's new siting under a reservoir of the Missouri River, Lake Oahe, as a particular point of concern. The reservoir is located just north of the Standing Rock Reservation and is its primary source of water, meaning that any spills could endanger the health and safety of this community (Hersher, 2017).
Timeline of the Protests and Legal Challenges
On-site protests at the Standing Rock Reservation formally began in April of 2016, where thousands of protestors (or water protectors, as coined by members of the movement) gathered to demonstrate against the pipeline in camps (Hu, 2024). These demonstrations included peaceful marches near pipeline construction sites, horseback rides, and even some protectors chaining themselves to construction equipment to slow USACE efforts (Native Knowledge 360°, n.d.). Related social media campaigns like "#NoDAPL" on Twitter were instrumental in calling attention to the issue among the broader American public, helping to expand the number of protestors from hundreds to thousands over the course of the summer (Native Knowledge 360°, n.d.). These efforts, both in-person and online, also helped garner the support of politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders and 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, which further pushed the issue into the public eye (Bromwich, 2016; Weigel, 2016).
Yet opposition to the project from Indigenous communities stretches back to 2014, when the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council voiced their clear objections to the pipeline in an early meeting with Energy Transfer representatives (Hersher, 2017; Thoet, 2016). In the following month, USACE officials initiated the project, publishing an environmental assessment in December which maintained that "the Standing Rock THPO [Tribal Historic Preservation Office] indicated to DAPL that the Lake Oahe site avoided impacts to tribally significant sites" (NYC Stands with Standing Rock Collective, 2016). This assertion was in clear contrast to numerous statements released by tribal leaders, who stated that the USACE failed to solicit proper tribal participation throughout the identification process (Hu, 2024). In March of 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) all expressed misgivings over the USACE's environmental and cultural assessments in individual letters (Indian Country Today Staff, 2016). These federal agencies emphasized the need for a formal environmental impact assessment and impact statement in order to account for potential impacts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The ACHP in particular stated that "It is troubling to note that the THPO's letters indicate the Corps took more than seven months to address the tribe's specific concerns" (Indian Country Today Staff, 2016).
Despite these concerns from tribes, environmentalists, and other federal agencies, the Corps approved construction on the portion of the pipeline crossing Lake Oahe in July, stating that "No significant comments remain unresolved" (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, 2016). Omaha District Commander, Col. John Henderson, concurred that the pipeline siting was found to be "not injurious to the public interest" (Hersher, 2017).
In response to this decision, the Standing Rock Sioux, under representation by the environmental public interest law firm Earthjustice, filed an injunction suing the USACE for inadequately consulting tribal members before approving the pipeline the following August (Hersher, 2017). The tribe reasoned that the USACE violated the National Historic Preservation Act when it granted the construction of the pipeline in and around federally regulated waters without provisions to ensure the protection of culturally significant sites. Later that same month, Dakota Access LLC countersued Standing Rock leadership on the grounds that protestors were illegally halting construction activities (Hersher, 2017).
What followed was a period of halting and restarting construction, with the deployment of the North Dakota National Guard and private security forces via Dakota Access LLC to combat ongoing protests in the interim. In September of 2016, construction was brought to a brief standstill by a U.S. District Judge in the wake of proceeding lawsuits, only to resume days later on the grounds that the Army Corps "likely complied" with the obligation to consult the tribe (Kennedy, 2016). The following December, the Obama administration denied permits for the pipeline and requested that the Corps halt construction in order to issue a formal environmental impact report with full public input. The decision was later reversed after the newly minted Trump administration issued an executive memorandum to expedite the approval process (Hersher, 2017). The USACE later terminated their environmental review in February of 2017, and construction was completed in April despite various legal requests and petitions by the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes (Hersher, 2017).
Still, the legal challenges of the pipeline persisted even after construction was completed. In March of 2020, Dakota Access LLC's permits were struck down by a federal court, which ordered the company to conduct a comprehensive environmental review (Lakhani, 2020). The corporation attempted to overturn the decision, and the case was brought in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in February of 2022, where their appeal was ultimately rejected (Lakhani, 2022). As a result, the lower court's decision to enforce an environmental assessment remains intact while the pipeline continues full operations in the meantime.
Colonial Lineage of Siting and Resource Extraction
Bakken Oil Fields and the North Dakota Oil Boom
The construction of the DAPL and other pipelines in the region have come to fruition in the wake of the North Dakota Oil Boom, a phenomenon in which the state's Bakken oil fields saw unprecedented growth in extraction from 2006 to 2014 (Horwitz, 2014). With the thriving oil industry came a new wave of jobs and the necessity for infrastructure to match this overflowing supply in the region. The state saw the lowest unemployment rate in the country between 2008 and 2014, and an influx in temporary workers dramatically increased populations in some counties (Carlson, 2015). With this influx of workers came a marked strain on resources and infrastructure like roads, sewage systems, and water supplies at the detriment of permanent residents. The housing shortages that followed led to the need for temporary housing for oil workers, sometimes deemed "man camps" (Carlson, 2015). Law enforcement officials reported a steep uptick in criminal activity in these camps, in particular pertaining to sexual violence against local Indigenous women (Condes, 2021). Indigenous women are already at a vastly heightened risk for physical and sexual abuse, with almost 80 percent experiencing some form of physical abuse in their lifetime, and roughly 50 percent experiencing sexual assault (Nelson, 2022).
The Bakken oil fields and their surrounding land are inhabited by the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations, making up the MHA Nation or Three Affiliated Tribes (Horwitz, 2014). The economic and agricultural resources of the MHA were gravely decimated by the construction of a dam on the nearby Missouri River, which flooded nearly 479 square miles of their land in 1947 (Horwitz, 2014). Now, the same land which the Nation was forced to resettle on following the dam's construction is once again of interest to the government with the discovery of plentiful oil reserves. Community members have cited "a tidal wave" of crime within the nation, with an increase in violent crime in the region of 121 percent between 2005 and 2011 (Horwitz, 2014). Officials have said that almost 90 percent of this influx of crime in the Nation has been drug-related (Horwitz, 2014). Already battling strained resources, these tribes must now contend with not only the environmental destruction of drilling and fracking, but also a curtailed sense of safety and wellbeing.
Though the growth of the oil industry in North Dakota has declined since oil prices fell in 2015, the state remains a major producer of crude oil in the country (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2024). The endeavor has proven to be lucrative for the American economy, but Indigenous communities in the region are not reaping these benefits. Instead, they have been subject to heightened levels of crime, drug addiction, and violence with no more economic mobility than before the boom.
A History of Oil Spills from Energy Transfer Partners
The environmental concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are not merely speculatory, but based upon numerous pipeline leaks in previous years. In fact, there are several instances in which Energy Transfer Partners have been responsible for spills while in the process of DAPL construction. In April of 2017, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency criticized Energy Transfer Partners for a pattern of 18 spills of millions of gallons of drilling fluid in Ohio wetlands (Mufson, 2021). The state EPA's report came after two particular incidents of discharged drilling fluid, with one spill spanning the area of eight and a half football fields (Mufson, 2021). The drilling fluid, while not toxic, is roughly the consistency of mud and can smother plants and wildlife wherever it leaks. These incidents occurred during the construction of the Rover natural gas pipeline, which spans from Appalachia to Ontario and became operational in 2018. During the same construction process, a house dating back to 1843 and under consideration for the National Register of Historic Places was left out of the pipeline's permit application and demolished without notice (McKenna, 2017). It's clear that the corporation's risk assessments are not infallible, and their conduct when it comes to historic preservation can be disorganized and careless.
The inherent uncertainty of these massive energy projects, hidden under the guise of supposedly definitive assessments and permits, has given way to an array of other calamitous oil spills. A 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, where an Enbridge pipeline burst, dumped close to one million gallons of oil into the Michigan waterway (Sierra Club, n.d.). The spill cost over a billion dollars to clean up over the course of five years. In 2015, a Bakken crude oil spill occurred in Montana's Yellowstone River, leaking at least 30,000 gallons of oil into the river and heightening carcinogenic benzene levels up to 15 parts per billion (the EPA says that anything above five parts per billion poses long-term health risks) (Montana Department of Justice, n.d.; Oregon Health Authority, 2015). Thousands of residents in the nearby city of Glendive were forced to use bottled water in the following weeks due to concerns over tap water contamination.
Pipeline spills of this caliber can be found all throughout recent American history. These numerous incidents beg the question of how we are conducting environmental assessments, revising the regulation process, and working to actively improve this infrastructure in the aftermath of such destruction. Have developers retained anything from these cautionary tales, or are the concerns of affected communities only ameliorated when the damage has been done? Energy Transfer's persistent use of force and litigation against the Standing Rock community seems to enforce this more negative reality.
Colonial Dimensions of Energy Infrastructure Siting on Indigenous Land
The construction of the DAPL is hardly the first time that the United States has shown a disregard for Indigenous land while siting energy infrastructure projects. In fact, it's not even the first time the Army Corps of Engineers have led a disruptive project on the Standing Rock Reservation. In 1944, Congress greenlit the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Plan, a project authorizing the construction of five large dams on Lake Oahe to support hydropower along the Missouri River (Lawson, 1983). The dams destroyed more Indigenous land than any other water project in the United States, effectively eliminating 90% of timber land (roughly 200,000 acres) on the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne Sioux Reservations in addition to ample grazing and agricultural land (Lawson, 1983).
This occurrence is not novel within the larger context of the federal government's brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. Tribal communities have been forcibly removed from their land for the more seamless extraction of natural resources and expansion of settler colonialism for centuries (Domínguez & Luoma, 2020). Yet when it comes to energy infrastructure projects, this lineage is particularly clear. Rugged landscapes in the American West and prairie country have long been characterized as "desolate wastelands," void of human life and thus perfect for all the country's unsightly energy needs (Wilkes, 2019). This narrative of the desolate wasteland treats the presence of Indigenous communities in these spaces as an afterthought, seeking to discount the value of land in order to emphasize its destiny for risky infrastructure projects like oil pipelines and nuclear reactors. Under this paradigm there are, allegedly, no better options for such investments. More accurately, there are few other communities that the federal government and private corporations are more willing to undermine.
When it becomes apparent that these spaces are more than just a place for dispossessed Indigenous peoples and instead potentially lucrative, value is once again given to the wasteland. In the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, this value is assigned in similarly economic terms. Developers maintain that the actions of water protectors "deny private property rights and freedoms to the landowners ... and deny American citizens and businesses the energy they need to produce jobs and build a vital and healthy economy" (Dakota Access Pipeline, 2017). Further, developers express a deep commitment to defending "the rights we have been granted through proper and legal venues, and the rights of Americans to reduce foreign dependence on fossil fuels…" (Dakota Access Pipeline, 2017). These assertions are very much in line with the colonial interests of an augmented free-market economy, protected private property, and an ultimate goal to out-compete foreign powers. They seem to conflate the legality of such land grabs with moral soundness.
These colonial attitudes baked into siting efforts for energy projects like the DAPL recall Manifest Destiny-era notions that resources of "unclaimed" land must be harnessed for a brighter future. Here, the language of developers is particularly interesting in its framing of the project as not only a right but a duty of the American people in order to promote progress. But who is accounted for under this tricky label of the "American"?
Private Corporate Interests vs. Indigenous Livelihoods
Legality Over Morality
When arguments from pipeline developers are so dependent on the minute details of laws and permits that by design subjugate the rights of Indigenous communities, it is hard to see how good-faith bargaining and harm assessments could be taking place concurrently. The concern is about what can legally be done, but not morally what should be done. Their language emphasizes that, legally, the pipeline is located on government-controlled land, as if this means the thousands of gallons of oil that flow through it exist in a vacuum. Placing technical legality at the forefront of corporate arguments is in stark opposition to the realities of private/federal interactions with Indigenous communities across history. Stipulations of agreements like the Treaty of Fort Laramie have been breached time and time again by the federal government, begging the question of when we consider laws to be binding and when we don't. Energy Transfer Partners may have obtained technically legal construction permits, but the cession of the Black Hills from the Great Sioux Reservation in 1877 was not obtained with legal tribal support (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, n.d.). Neither was the eviction of 190 families on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in preparation for the Lake Oahe dam in 1960 (Lawson, 1976). Displacement and cherry-picked disregard for legal agreements, whether tacitly or in writing, have been par for the course in Indigenous and federal relations throughout American history.
Environmental Racism and Inadequate Cultural Assessments
In other ways, the federal government and corporations make their priorities clear through action. The rerouting of the DAPL from Bismarck to Lake Oahe clearly reflects the environmental racism underpinning the project. Officials are not willing to risk the adverse health and safety effects of a spill for the wealthier and whiter residents of Bismarck, but are willing to take such a gamble on the lives of Indigenous people. The financial benefits of the project are not returned to the communities that the pipeline bisects, but instead funneled back into the multi-billion dollar energy industry giants that led the project in the first place (Fredericks et al., 2018). This circular distribution of profits falls in line with the U.S.'s historical proclivity for stripping Indigenous lands of their resources and imperiling the wellbeing of communities deemed expendable. Further, this dynamic of building first and asking questions later calls into question the credibility of preliminary environmental assessments. In the case of the DAPL, construction was able to move forward on the grounds of initial assessments, yet seven years later the USACE has been ordered to issue more comprehensive reports (Hu, 2024). In the meantime, the pipeline continues to operate without a comprehensive knowledge of its environmental impacts.
Beyond environmental implications, the USACE appears to have less concern over cultural, historical, and spiritual impacts of the DAPL's construction. These damages are not as tangible as an oil spill, and thus are placed on the backburner. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe maintains that they were not meaningfully incorporated into this process, and the question remains as to how these assessments were conducted in the first place by an entity that would benefit from an ultimate green light. How is the USACE well-equipped to make such distinctions, and present them as definitive, with such a deficient inclusion of Indigenous voices?
Corporate-Funded Militarized Protest Suppression
An important dimension of the DAPL protests is the rampant use of militarized force against protestors. In addition to the presence of local law enforcement and the North Dakota National Guard, Energy Transfer hired private security firm TigerSwan to break up demonstrations at the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016. TigerSwan, founded by an ex-commander of the Army special operations counterterrorism unit Delta Force, employed a variety of military-style strategies against protestors at the behest of Energy Transfer (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023). These tactics included the unauthorized use of attack dogs on protestors, several of whom sustained serious bite wounds, including a small child (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023; Hersher, 2017). Forces also used pepper spray and mace, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and water cannons in subfreezing temperatures. Sound cannons known as Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) were implemented, producing piercing sounds at extreme decibels known to cause permanent hearing damage (Stelloh et al., 2016). Underscoring these violent strategies is the fact that the firm failed to acquire a security license from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, yet continued to employ its security services for several months (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023).
Beyond physical tactics, 50,000 pages of company documents ordered for release by the North Dakota Supreme Court in 2022 revealed that TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and a subscription-based records database to create watchlists on Indigenous and environmental activists and organizations tied to the protests (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023). Information collected from these methods was then shared with Energy Transfer to help the corporation build a legal case against the Standing Rock Tribe. Additionally, TigerSwan used this data to help launch pro-pipeline media campaigns that gained millions of online impressions, as well as marketing materials to pitch to at least two other energy companies in informing future pipeline protest security strategies (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023). Energy Transfer also hired the company in 2017 for security services along the Rover Pipeline in Ohio and West Virginia, utilizing what they labeled a "counterinsurgency approach" (Brown & Sadasivam, 2023).
These military-style tactics used in instances of largely peaceful demonstration highlight a troubling precedent for future environmental protests. Private corporations with high-level security firms at their disposal are key players in the American energy economy, meaning that this degree of violence could become a new normal. The United States has a long lineage of employing violence against Indigenous communities, placing these groups, whose land is often encroached on by undesirable energy infrastructure, at a heightened risk of brutalization.
Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy
We chose DAPL as an analog of a large and publicly-contested infrastructure project. Its siting through Indigenous land, and the brutalized response from the federal government and private security forces against protestors highlights how dissenters may be undermined in the case of nuclear energy. The case also acts as an example of energy infrastructure built on "greater good" narratives, but which actually disempowers marginalized communities and concentrates the risks of such technology on their land. In the context of AN, this same problem may be salient if ARs are sited within marginalized communities, but community members may not reap the actual benefits of energy production in full, especially if the risks outweigh these purported energy benefits. AN may also drive the heightened surveillance and policing of these marginalized communities, which seeks to disempower and endanger residents. AN may also extend the devaluation of Indigenous land in the context of waste storage and domestic uranium mining, which in the past has been concentrated heavily in Indigenous communities of the American West.
Key Sources
#StandingRockSyllabus. (2016, October 11). #StandingRockSyllabus. NYC Stands with Standing Rock.
Brown, A., & Sadasivam, N. (2023, April 13). After infiltrating Standing Rock, TigerSwan pitched its "counterinsurgency" playbook to other oil companies. Grist.
Hersher, R. (2017, February 22). Key moments in the Dakota Access Pipeline fight. NPR.
Hu, S. (2024, June 12). The Dakota Access Pipeline: What you need to know. NRDC.
Mufson, S. (2017, May 8). Pipeline spill by Dakota Access company could have a 'deadly effect.' The Washington Post.
Native Knowledge 360°. (n.d.). Treaties still matter: The Dakota Access Pipeline. National Museum of the American Indian. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
References
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Photo: Stand with Standing Rock rally, San Francisco, November 15, 2016. Pax Ahimsa Gethen / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, via Flickr