A Single Texas Billionaire Is About to Bankrupt Greenpeace USA

The Texas billionaire and owner of a major pipeline company is on the verge of bankrupting Greenpeace USA, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Kelcy Warren’s company, Energy Transfer, is seeking legal action against the U.S. branch of Greenpeace in court, alleging that several U.S. Greenpeace entities paid for attacks on the company’s Dakota Access Pipeline and spread disinformation about the company and its project in 2016, the WSJ reports. At the time, the project was a flashpoint in the environmental movement’s crusade against major fossil fuel infrastructure developments, and it was eventually completed in 2017.

“Everybody’s afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that if you fight back against these people, it’s going to look bad,” Warren said in a 2017 television interview, according to the WSJ. “But what they did to us was wrong, and they’re going to pay for it.”

Environmental activists flocked to the pipeline construction site in North Dakota in 2016 to try to stop construction of the $3.8 billion project, and clashes between the protesters and law enforcement have occasionally turned violent, the WSJ reported. The lawsuit, which seeks $300 million in damages, would likely crush Greenpeace USA, though it poses no such threat to Greenpeace’s international operations because the organization’s main organizing body, based in the Netherlands, has no assets in the U.S.

The company first tried to sue in federal court, then refiled in state court after a federal judge dismissed the original lawsuit, the WSJ reported. Energy Transfer is pursuing the lawsuit under a law originally designed to crack down on the mob.

According to Warren — who once said that climate activists should be “purged from the gene pool” — Greenpeace USA was primarily responsible for delaying the project’s construction and imposing millions of dollars in additional costs on Energy Transfer, the WSJ reports. Greenpeace, meanwhile, argues that the lawsuit risks stifling free speech and that it played only a supporting role in the protests against the pipeline.

In addition, Greenpeace USA is bracing for a range of possible outcomes, including bankruptcy, as some leaders and board members argue over what settlement would be acceptable, the WSJ reported.

“You’re not going to wear Kelcy Warren down, I can promise you that,” Matthew Ramsey, a director on Energy Transfer’s board of directors, told the WSJ. “He’s going to fight to the bitter end.”

Greenpeace USA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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