
In recent years, many states have passed what they call “critical infrastructure laws,” which criminalize protests against fossil fuel projects like the Dakota Access pipeline, where 800 protesters were criminally charged. New federal legislation is now being considered that would add vaguely worded elements to the reauthorization bill for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, that could put protesters at risk for prosecution on federal charges, and threaten freedom of the press.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Emily Sanders, senior reporter with ExxonKnews, a reporting and analysis project of the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports communities working to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its deceptions.
Sanders’ recent article titled, “Big Oil Wants to Increase Federal Criminal Penalties for Pipeline Protests,” documents how fossil fuel companies and allied trade groups are using pipeline safety legislation to further criminalize activists organizing to address the climate crisis. Here she describes the threats posed by this legislation.
EMILY SANDERS: I started reporting on this a few months ago because I was looking at the pipeline safety reauthorization negotiations that were going on in Congress, which started in the wake of a really disastrous carbon capture pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi, that sent nearly 50 people to the hospital and stalled emergency response vehicles — just created a huge disaster there.
And people realized, in the wake of that, that carbon capture and carbon dioxide pipelines are not very well understood, and the safety requirements needed to protect communities were not very well understood, and they still aren’t. So advocates began pushing for new safety rules and the industry has been lobbying and pushing to limit those safety rules and dictate as many safety standards as they can on their own.
And while I was reporting that story, I started finding policy briefs and hearing testimony and lobbying records which all indicated that the industry has been encouraging Congress to add additional, broader language that would expand the definition of a pipeline protest that’s punishable under existing federal law and the penalties for such protests. Even though it’s already illegal to damage or destroy a pipeline under federal law, according to one policy brief by the American Petroleum Institute on pipeline safety reauthorization legislative priorities, published last year, new pipeline legislation should “fill the gaps in current law with additional measures covering disruption of service and attacks on construction sites.”
Of course, that is very vague language. No one really knows what an attack on a construction site could entail; what disruption of service could entail. And this really has the power to tamp down and to silence protesters who oppose the fossil fuel industry’s build-out of infrastructure, and in particular, infrastructure that threatens the climate, threatens the planet and threatens communities.
Right now, there are two bills being considered in the House: there’s the Energy and Commerce Committee’s bill. And then there’s the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s bill. The House has to reconcile those two bills, and then it goes over to the Senate.
What I found was that these vague measures to criminalize protest of pipelines started showing up in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s draft bill. The bill says it would add, “impairing the operation of interstate pipelines,” “damaging or destroying such a facility under construction,” and even “attempting or conspiring to do so” as felony activities that could be punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Again, we don’t know what “impairing” the operation of a pipeline really means. If interpreted broadly, there is a whole set of constitutionally protected protest activities that could be implicated by this. It’s not just locking yourself to pipeline equipment. Pipeline protests can also be sit-ins at a construction site. They can be a march. Planting sacred corn in the pathway of a pipeline as they did in the Keystone XL protests. We know how concerning this is because other, similar laws have been passed at the state level to crack down on protests, and those have perpetuated mass waves of arrests.
MELINDA TUHUS: Is this just getting out there due to your reporting, or is this something that other people closer to the ground know about, and are you aware of any efforts to expose this or turn back this kind of vague wording that could be included in the reauthorization?
EMILY SANDERS: I know that there are groups that are generally fighting the broader effort to criminalize protest and criminalize protest of fossil fuel infrastructure. And there are groups that can provide free, or pro bono, legal defense to people who need help, whose First Amendment rights have been trampled on. The Climate Defense Project is really good for that; the Center for Constitutional Rights as well.
But, ultimately, I think the theme I kept hearing from advocates is that the industry wouldn’t be trying so hard to silence its opposition if it wasn’t being seriously threatened by it.
For more information, visit Exxon Knews at ExxonKnews.org.
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