The Energy Transfer Greenpeace lawsuit is a North Dakota case in which the pipeline company Energy Transfer sued three Greenpeace organizations over their role in the 2016–2017 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. A jury found all three defendants liable in March 2025 and awarded roughly $667 million. The trial judge later cut that figure to about $345 million, and final judgment was entered on February 27, 2026, at $345,358,436 plus 11 percent annual interest running from the verdict date. Greenpeace has moved for a new trial, says it will appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court if that fails, and has opened a separate case against Energy Transfer in the Netherlands.
What Energy Transfer Sued Greenpeace Over
The dispute goes back to the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile crude-oil line running from northwest North Dakota to southern Illinois. Its route beneath Lake Oahe on the Missouri River drew opposition from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which argued the crossing threatened the reservation’s water supply and cut through unceded treaty lands. Protests that began in early 2016 grew into what observers described as the largest Indigenous-led demonstration in decades, with camps of thousands of water protectors persisting for roughly seven months before being cleared in February 2017. By that point more than 700 people had been arrested.
Energy Transfer alleged that protesters blocked construction, occupied company property, damaged above-ground facilities, and spread false information about the pipeline. Greenpeace and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have said the movement was organized and led by Indigenous people, not outside groups, and that the demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful.
The three defendants in the case that went to trial were Greenpeace, Inc. (Greenpeace USA), Greenpeace Fund, and Greenpeace International. The claims were state tort claims: defamation, tortious interference with business, trespass, nuisance, conversion, civil conspiracy, and aiding and abetting.
The Failed Federal RICO Case
Energy Transfer first sued in 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota, seeking $900 million and accusing a broader list of defendants of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That case did not survive. BankTrack was dismissed in July 2018 because sending letters and posting blog articles did not plausibly amount to racketeering. Earth First! was dismissed the following month as a philosophy rather than a suable entity. On February 14, 2019, the court dismissed the remaining RICO claims against all defendants with prejudice, finding that Energy Transfer had failed to establish a RICO enterprise or a pattern of racketeering activity.
One week later, Energy Transfer refiled in state court in Morton County, North Dakota, the county where the protests had taken place. That state case is the one that produced the 2025 verdict.
The March 2025 Verdict
The trial ran three weeks and ended on March 19, 2025, when a unanimous jury returned a verdict against all three Greenpeace defendants totaling roughly $667 million. Liability was not uniform across the defendants:
- Greenpeace USA was found liable on nearly all claims, including conspiracy.
- Greenpeace International was found liable for defamation, tortious interference with business, and conspiracy, but not for on-the-ground harms committed by individual protesters.
- Greenpeace Fund was found liable for defamation and tortious interference with business, but not for physical protest conduct.
Sushma Raman, then the interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, told reporters the award “far exceeds our annual budget by many times.” Asked whether the judgment could bankrupt the organization, she said Greenpeace planned to appeal and was “not at the stage of having to pay,” adding: “You can’t bankrupt a movement. You can attack an organization, but the movement is bigger than the organization.”
Before trial, Greenpeace had fought to move the case out of Morton County, arguing that the local economy’s deep ties to the oil industry made a fair trial impossible there. The court denied the venue-change petition in March 2025 and also declined a request to livestream the proceedings.
How the Damages Were Cut to $345 Million
Both sides filed post-trial motions. In an order dated October 29, 2025, Judge James Gion granted the defendants’ motions in part and reduced the damages to approximately $345.36 million. Several categories of liability and damages were eliminated:
- Trespass to land and conversion claims were thrown out because there was no evidence the Greenpeace entities held a real-estate interest or caused specific equipment downtime.
- Defamation per se was disallowed as duplicative of the general defamation claim.
- All exemplary (punitive) damages tied to defamation were eliminated, and caps were placed on exemplary damages for trespass to chattels, nuisance, and aiding-and-abetting claims.
The final judgment was entered on February 27, 2026, at $345,358,436, with 11 percent annual interest accruing from the verdict date of March 19, 2025, until the sum is paid in full.
Greenpeace’s Motion for a New Trial
On March 27, 2026, the Greenpeace defendants filed a motion for a new trial or to alter the judgment, backed by a brief exceeding 100 pages. Their principal arguments:
- Venue bias. The defendants argued they could not receive a fair trial in Morton County given the community’s economic dependence on the oil industry.
- Juror impartiality. Greenpeace said seven of the nine jurors held clear biases stemming from fossil-fuel industry ties, personal experience with the Standing Rock protests, or preexisting negative opinions of the defendants.
- Improper damages allocation. North Dakota law requires damages to be apportioned among all parties who contributed to the alleged harm, but the jury assigned 100 percent of the damages to the Greenpeace entities alone.
- Evidentiary errors. Greenpeace argued the verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence, that jurors saw inadmissible and prejudicial information, and that defense evidence was improperly excluded.
- Jury instructions. The motion alleged erroneous and incomplete instructions along with a flawed verdict form.
As of mid-2026 the district court had not ruled on the motion. If it is denied, Greenpeace has said it will appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court.
The Bond Dispute
A losing party that wants to appeal while pausing enforcement of a money judgment typically has to post a supersedeas bond, essentially a financial guarantee that the winner will collect if the appeal fails. Under North Dakota law the bond for all appellants collectively is capped at $25 million. Greenpeace asked Judge Gion to waive the bond entirely, saying it lacked the resources to post even a reduced amount, or in the alternative to set security at $5 million, which Greenpeace said reflected the figure Energy Transfer had previously indicated it would accept in settlement. The court initially granted Greenpeace an unsecured 61-day stay without requiring any bond.
Energy Transfer moved to vacate that stay, arguing that North Dakota procedural rules require bond or other security before a judgment can be paused. In its filing the company cited Greenpeace’s own disclosures showing roughly $10 to $12 million in insurance coverage and about $8.7 million in assets available to the defendants, a fraction of the $345 million judgment. The bond fight was unresolved as of mid-2026.
The Netherlands Countersuit and the Antisuit Injunction
Two weeks before the North Dakota trial started, Greenpeace International filed its own lawsuit against Energy Transfer in the District Court of Amsterdam. The Dutch suit alleges that the American litigation is a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, meaning a case brought not to win on the merits but to drain an opponent’s resources and deter future criticism. Greenpeace International is seeking damages for the financial, reputational, and organizational harm it says the American litigation has caused.
On June 3, 2026, the Amsterdam court ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear the case, rejecting Energy Transfer’s argument that any alleged harm occurred exclusively in the United States. The court found that Greenpeace International employees in the Netherlands were being forced to defend the American lawsuits from Dutch soil, and noted that Energy Transfer itself had pointed to Greenpeace International’s Dutch headquarters as the origin of conduct it claimed caused financial damage.
Greenpeace International urged the court to interpret Dutch procedural law in light of the European Union’s Anti-SLAPP Directive, adopted in 2024, which allows targets of abusive third-country lawsuits to seek compensation. The court declined, holding that the directive does not apply retroactively to proceedings initiated in 2017 and 2019 and that the Netherlands had not yet transposed it into national law by the time the American cases were filed. The suit was allowed to proceed on independent grounds under Dutch tort law, and Energy Transfer was given six weeks to file its response.
Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International, said after the ruling: “Greenpeace International is holding this Big Oil bully accountable for repeated attempts at silencing our speech. Energy Transfer is clearly desperate to avoid this case, but Kelcy Warren’s pipeline company will have to answer for its actions here in the Netherlands.”
Energy Transfer tried to shut the Dutch case down from the American side by asking Judge Gion for an antisuit injunction, a court order barring Greenpeace International from pursuing its Netherlands claims. The district court denied the request, reasoning that the issues in the two cases were distinct and that North Dakota law does not recognize SLAPP or anti-SLAPP actions. Energy Transfer petitioned the North Dakota Supreme Court, which ruled on May 7, 2026, in a 4–1 decision authored by Justice Tufte. The majority held that the lower court had applied the wrong legal framework and ordered it to issue a “narrowly tailored” antisuit injunction. The injunction must block Greenpeace International from pursuing any Dutch claim whose elements would require a finding that the North Dakota lawsuit lacked legal foundation. It must not bar claims based on the dismissed federal RICO suit or on alleged out-of-court defamatory statements by Energy Transfer. Chief Justice Fair McEvers dissented, concluding that the district court had acted within its discretion and would in any event lack authority to issue an injunction without first establishing personal jurisdiction over Greenpeace International on that question.
What Each Side Says Actually Happened
Greenpeace has said throughout the case that its involvement at Standing Rock was limited. The organization says it sent six employees to the protest camps after being invited by Indigenous leaders to help with nonviolent direct-action training and de-escalation, and that they left by early December 2016. Greenpeace insists there is “zero evidence” that any of its staff, funding, or resources were involved in violence or property destruction.
On defamation, Greenpeace argues that the nine statements Energy Transfer identified are protected by the First Amendment and that the company failed to meet the “actual malice” standard required when a public figure sues for defamation. On causation, Greenpeace contends that the construction delays Energy Transfer blamed on protesters were actually caused by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withholding an easement in response to the tribe’s federal lawsuit and regulatory concerns, and that banks pulled financing based on their own independent risk assessments.
Deepa Padmanabha, senior legal advisor for Greenpeace USA, called the lawsuit “a test on our First Amendment rights during a very, very dangerous time in this country’s history.” James Wheaton, founder of the First Amendment Project, warned that a Greenpeace loss could establish that anyone who assists a protest may be held legally responsible for what others do at that protest.
Energy Transfer has consistently rejected the SLAPP label. A company spokesperson told CNN before the trial: “Our lawsuit is about recovering damages for the harm Greenpeace caused our company. It is not about free speech.” The company says Greenpeace went well beyond protected speech by organizing, funding, and encouraging unlawful destruction of property and by spreading misinformation that damaged its business relationships and drove up costs.
Energy Transfer’s executive chairman, Kelcy Warren, has been the driving force behind the litigation. Warren co-founded the company in 1996 and ranks among the 200 wealthiest people in the United States, with a net worth Forbes estimated at $8 billion as of mid-2026. He has been a prolific Republican donor, contributing $10 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2020 and $5 million to a Trump-aligned PAC in 2024, among nearly $28 million in total federal political contributions since 2010. After the verdict, Forbes reported that Warren pursued the case because he “wanted to send a message to protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”
What Standing Rock Says
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has pushed back forcefully. Tribal Chairwoman Janet Alkire said she took “offense to the jury verdict,” calling Energy Transfer’s claims “ridiculous,” “wholly disrespectful,” and “patronizing.” She rejected what she called the “false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL,” saying the movement was started by the tribe’s own youth and elders to protect their water.
Alkire also criticized the trial itself, noting that the court did not make the transcript public, that documents were shielded by a secrecy order, and that the presiding judge displayed what she described as significant bias. She cited an international human rights lawyer who monitored the proceedings as stating, “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace.” The tribe’s formal statement described the lawsuit as an attempt to “silence our Tribe about the truth of what happened at Standing Rock” and declared: “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will not be silenced.”
Why the Case Matters Beyond the Parties
The lawsuit has become a focal point in a longer argument over the use of aggressive civil litigation against advocacy organizations. In a September 2022 congressional hearing, witnesses testified that between 2015 and 2018, twelve major fossil-fuel companies brought at least 24 lawsuits against 71 environmental defenders, seeking a combined $904 million in damages. Greenpeace’s legal team has pointed out that the same law firm representing Energy Transfer had previously handled a $100 million RICO suit filed by Resolute Forest Products against Greenpeace over forestry advocacy.
Critics say such suits function as SLAPPs even when they survive motions to dismiss, because the cost of defending years of litigation drains resources that nonprofits would otherwise spend on their missions. North Dakota does not have an anti-SLAPP statute, and there is no federal equivalent. Representative Jamie Raskin introduced the SLAPP Protection Act of 2022 to create a uniform federal standard for early dismissal of retaliatory lawsuits; as of mid-2026 it had not become law. Industry groups that filed amicus briefs in support of Energy Transfer have argued that Greenpeace’s direct involvement in planning protests, providing materials, and publicizing contested claims goes beyond protected speech and caused real, measurable harm.