The Dakota Access pipeline is funded directly by 17 banks, many of which — Citibank, Wells Fargo — are ones you’ve probably heard of or do business with.
Researchers with the nonprofit Food & Water Watch found that 38 banking institutions are involved in funding the proposed Bakken pipeline, which would stretch from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. A section of this project is the Dakota Access pipeline, where the Standing Rock Sioux and thousands of allies have physically put themselves in the path of the pipeline to protect their reservation and a stretch of the Missouri River.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, recently wrote an article for YES! suggesting that banks are more susceptible to public pressure than the oil and gas giants, which depend on bank loans and lines of credit to build their pipelines. “It’s probably sustained public pressure that will do the most good,” he wrote.
Food & Water Watch researcher Hugh MacMillan: “Ask these banks to clarify whether funds they are providing are being used, in any amount, to pay for the heavily militarized response to the Standing Rock Sioux, including the attack dogs, sound-cannon trucks, heavily armed officers, and even a crop duster spraying undetermined chemicals over the camp.
“People should also ask these institutions why they are sinking so much money into maximizing the amounts of oil and gas that can be brought to the surface and burned at a time when climate science is clear we have to maximize what we keep in the ground instead,” said MacMillan.
The organization’s deputy communications director, Seth Gladstone, suggests saying: “As a customer of your financial institution, I reject the notion of my money helping to support your investment in the Dakota Access pipeline, an inherently dangerous and unjust oil pipeline that threatens air and water quality in many states, and violates sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. I urge you to give up your financial stake in the Dakota Access pipeline…