The Texas billionaire owner of a major pipeline company is on the precipice of potentially bankrupting Greenpeace USA, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Kelcy Warren’s company, Energy Transfer, is seeking legal recourse against Greenpeace’s American arm in court, alleging that several Greenpeace USA entities paid for attacks against the company’s Dakota Access Pipeline and proliferated misinformation about the firm and its project in 2016, according to the WSJ. At the time, the project was a flashpoint in the environmental movement’s crusade against major fossil fuel infrastructure developments, and it was ultimately completed in 2017.
“Everybody is afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you fight back with these people,” Warren said in a televised interview in 2017, according to the WSJ. “But what they did to us is wrong, and they’re gonna pay for it.”
Eco-activists flocked to the construction site of the pipeline in North Dakota in 2016 to try to stop the $3.8 billion project from being built, and clashes between the protesters and law enforcement occasionally turned violent, according to the WSJ. The lawsuit, which seeks $300 million in damages, would probably crush Greenpeace USA, though it does not pose such a threat to Greenpeace’s international operations because the organization’s main organizing body based in the Netherlands does not own assets in the U.S.
The company tried to sue in federal court first, and refiled the suit in a state court after a federal judge threw out the original litigation, according to the WSJ. Energy Transfer is pursuing the lawsuit under a law that was originally created to go after the mafia.
As Warren — who once said that climate activists should be “removed from the gene pool” — sees it, Greenpeace USA was principally responsible for delaying the project’s construction and imposing millions of dollars of added costs on Energy Transfer, according to the WSJ. Greenpeace, meanwhile, maintains that the lawsuit could stifle free speech and that it only ever played a supporting role in the protests against the pipeline.
Moreover, Greenpeace USA is also preparing for a range of possible outcomes, including bankruptcy, while some of its leaders and members of the board have fought over what kind of settlement could be palatable, according to the WSJ.
“You’re not going to wear Kelcy Warren out, I can promise you that,” Matthew Ramsey, a director on Energy Transfer’s board, told the WSJ. “He will fight to the bitter end.”
Greenpeace USA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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