The fight by Native American leaders against the Dakota Access oil pipeline is not finished.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Friday filed a new lawsuit to shut down the Energy Transfer-owned pipeline that transports an average of 500,000 to 525,000 barrels of oil a day from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field to Illinois.
The North Dakota Monitor reports the tribe filed the case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and three federal officials of those agencies. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the Army Corps’ May record of decision granting an easement for the pipeline’s river crossing upstream of the tribe’s reservation, among other actions.
“For ten years, Standing Rock’s concerns about this pipeline have not changed, and for ten years we have fought to protect our water, our Treaty rights, and our people,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Steve Sitting Bear said in a statement. “The Army Corps has now chosen to move forward without addressing those concerns. Until this pipeline is shut down, we will continue to defend what generations before us protected for our children.”
It was 10 years ago when thousands gathered near the project’s Missouri River and staged months of demonstrations and violent protests. The tribe led the protests contending the pipeline was a threat to its water supply.
In 2020, a federal judge ordered a more rigorous environmental review of the pipeline’s river crossing. In May, the Army Corps issued its record of decision granting the crucial easement for the pipeline, which has continuously operated since mid-2017, reported the Monitor.
The tribe hasn’t surrendered and now contends the final environmental impact statement issued by the Army Corps in December 2025 does not resolve issues surrounding the safety of the pipeline, spill response, threats to the tribe’s sole source for drinking water, treaty rights and the federal government’s obligations to the tribe.
The tribe also expressed concerns about the pipeline potentially increasing capacity to 1.1 million barrels of oil per day which the tribe said would change operational risks related to spill volume and emergency shutdown, according to court papers.
“We should not have to live with unanswered questions about the safety of our water,” Sitting Bear said.
