Dakota Access pipeline protests spread as company fights back

Demonstrators fanned out Tuesday across North America to demand the U.S. government halt or reroute the Dakota Access pipeline as the companies behind the project asked a federal court for permission to complete it.

In what organizers said were the largest demonstrations to date against the pipeline - part of which would cross Iowa - thousands of people rallied outside Army Corps of Engineers offices, banks and energy companies a day after the Obama administration delayed a permit to finish the project.

The $3.7 billion Dakota Access project has drawn opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe as well as environmental activists who say it could pollute water supplies and destroy sacred historic tribal sites.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department reported 26 arrests in Cannon Ball, N.D., near the path of the pipeline, and said demonstrators attempted to block a railroad with a pickup truck then tried to set the vehicle on fire.

'Their job is to protect us, but instead they're protecting corporate interests and profits and money,” said Cannon Ball protester Fumi Tosu, 38, of California.

Energy Transfer Partners, the main company behind the pipeline, is seeking an easement to tunnel under Lake Oahe, the North Dakota water source at the heart of the protests. On Monday, the Army Corps delayed that approval.

Energy Transfer and its subsidiary, Sunoco Logistics Partners, filed papers in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking to 'end the Administration's political interference in the Dakota Access Pipeline review process.”

Energy Transfer asked the court to declare that the project had the legal right to proceed and needed no further government approvals.

'To propose, as the Corps now does, to further delay this pipeline and to engage in what can only be described as a sham process sends a frightening message about the rule of law,” said Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer's chief executive officer.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II said the legal action would not succeed.

'Dakota Access is so desperate to get this project in the ground that it is now suing the federal government on the novel theory that it doesn't need an easement to cross federal lands,” he said in a statement.

The Army Corps said it plans to get more input from the Standing Rock Sioux in light of the tribe repeatedly being 'dispossessed” from its lands in the past.

Energy Transfer has said the 1,172-mile pipeline, which is nearly finished, would be a more efficient and safer means to transport oil. It would stretch from the Bakken shale of North Dakota and across 18 counties in Iowa before ending at a hub in Illinois.

Analysts said they still expect the pipeline to be completed eventually.

'What is less clear is the startup date, and the exact routes,” said Afolabi Ogunnaike, an analyst at Wood MacKenzie, a commodities consultancy.

The protests came as Dakota Access was expected to win the support of President-elect Donald Trump, who has given strong backing for energy infrastructure projects. Warren, the Energy Transfer executive, donated more than $100,000 to Trump's campaign.