x YouTube Video

Fireworks illuminated the joyful tears of water protectors at the Oceti Sakowin camp on Dec. 4 when President Obama denied the easement needed for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to cross Lake Oahe. Mainstream media reported that very evening that Standing Rock had won. They were wrong.

Later that night, Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s developer, released a statement condemning the decision and announcing their plan to complete construction. “Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way,” reads the statement .

Despite brutal sub-zero conditions about one thousand water protectors remain at the Standing Rock encampments. Among them are hundreds of veterans from across the country, like Kellan Moore, who was so outraged at the treatment of water protectors by law enforcement that he drove from Chicago to stay at camp.

“These men [law enforcement] have been committing acts of domestic terrorism against an unarmed populace, women, children, old people, to protect the money of a large oil company,” said Moore, adding that the veterans are prepared to stay if Donald Trump attempts to reverse the Dec. 4 decision.

With about two weeks left until Trump’s inauguration, people are starting to worry about what this means for the pipeline and people staying at the Standing Rock camps. Trump announced earlier last month that he supports finishing construction, which isn’t surprising given he’s invested roughly $300,000 in the project.

Camp leaders and activists like Chase Iron Eyes, attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP), say they are preparing for the worst for when Trump takes office, and have no plan to back down.

“We’re not going to simply stand idle and let them poison our water, we’re staying until this pipeline is defeated,” said Iron Eyes, adding that Sunoco Logistics, the future operator of the pipeline, is notorious for crude oil spills, leaking more than any of their competitors.

Direct actions continue to spring up across the country in protest of the nearly-complete 1,172 mile pipeline. A consortium of 27 environmental and social justice organizations, including LPLP, launched a petition calling on the banks financing the pipeline to stop their support. More than 110,000 people who signed the petition have divested a total of $43 million from banks supporting DAPL thus far.

Prior to the new year, organizers were anticipating Jan. 1 as a contractual expiration date for some of DAPL’s shipping clients and were aiming to pull profits before then. But given the back-and-forth from ETP officials, it is uncertain when or if the project will be irreversibly doomed.

Energy Transfer Partners stated in court documents that they were committed to completing the project by the start of 2017, and had this deadline not been met, the shippers would maintain the “right to terminate their commitments” . In an email correspondence with The Guardian, however, DAPL spokeswoman Vicki Granado stated that Jan. 1 was not a “contractual date” but merely a target. The contractual deadline, she said, is “much later,” but she didn’t include exactly when.

This statement is contradictory of arguments DAPL itself has made in court , with a judge hearing a new case in February. Arguing that they were contractually obligated to complete the project before the Jan. 1 deadline, they noted that each month of delay cost them $4.5 million and a failure to launch would put them $913 million in losses for 2017.

Last week, two major investors held off putting the funds down for a $2 billion stake in DAPL, signaling apprehension about the return on investment from the project. Energy analyst Antonia Juhasz told Democracy Now! that this is a bad omen for ETP, stating that the investors “are worried and are not feeling secure enough to turn over their cash.”

Whether or not the company has broken deadlines or lost shippers is still unclear. What is clear is that ETP is perpetually losing money, and that does not bode well for the pipeline’s future in Treaty Lands.

###