Mountain Valley Pipeline, financed by Canadian banks and co-owned by a Canadian company, sues water protectors
Photo: Ojibwe water protector Tara Houska, locked to machinery at a Mountain Valley Pipeline worksite, October 16, 2023.
In response to a tweet that says: “For Indigenous People’s Day [a holiday in the United States observed this year on October 14] how about we drop all charges on Indigenous Land and Water protectors instead of being performative”, Ojibwe water protector Tara Houska tweeted: “Yes please. I’m being sued for $4M by Mountain Valley Pipeline company in Virginia — alongside dozens of grandmas, college kids, people who protested destruction & stood up for life. Meanwhile, hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, droughts, flooding, all of it rages on.”
Grist has explained: “In September 2023, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC filed a lawsuit against more than 40 individuals and two organizations — Appalachians Against Pipelines and Rising Tide North America. The suit seeks more than $4 million in damages and a ruling prohibiting the defendants from accessing construction sites, planning demonstrations, or raising funds for protest activities.”
That article further notes: “Those fighting the pipeline say the suit is intended to chill protest and intimidate them. Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC has been regularly adding defendants to the suit, often after identifying them near protests or reading their names in the news.”
On September 27, 2024, The Guardian also reported: “The MVP, a joint venture in which the gas giant EQT Corporation is now the majority shareholder and operator, is claiming millions of dollars in alleged damages resulting from peaceful and mostly brief acts of civil disobedience. Such lawsuits can chill free speech and debate, which are vital for a healthy democracy, according to the UN and other legal experts.”
It adds that the lawsuit now includes 22 named individuals and 25 Jane Does claims $4.35 million in damages.
The pipeline entered into service on June 14, 2024.
At that time, Reuters noted: “The Mountain Valley project is owned by units of [the pipeline’s then-“lead partner”] Equitrans [Equitrans Midstream/ETRN.N], NextEra Energy (NEE.N), Consolidated Edison (ED.N), AltaGas (ALA.TO), and RGC Resources (RGCO.O). Equitrans will operate the pipeline. …EQT [EQT.N] agreed in March to buy Equitrans in an all-stock deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter. That would bring back the pipeline business that EQT spun off in 2018.”
In 2018, when construction began on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Equitrans Midstream Corp. received more than $22 million in financing from two Canadian banks, Scotiabank and the Toronto-Dominion Bank. Between 2016 and 2023, the Royal Bank of Canada provided $1.36 billion in financing to EQT.
AltaGas, with a 10 percent/US $352 million ownership interest in the pipeline, is a Canadian corporation based in Calgary, Alberta.
Vanguard Group connections
Stop the Money Pipeline has noted: “MVP is among the numerous fossil fuel infrastructure projects in which Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, is deeply involved. As of the end of December 2023, Vanguard has over $16.7B in share holdings and almost $3B in bond holdings in the project’s owner companies.”
Vanguard Group Inc. is also the largest institutional shareholder in Nucor Corporation (NUE).
An investigative report by Contra Corriente and Drilled reveals that U.S.-based Nucor maintained a relationship with Inversiones Los Pinares, the company behind a controversial mining megaproject in Honduras, at least until September 30, 2023, despite having claimed to have ended their ties in October 2019.
The struggle to defend the Guapinol River from this megaproject has taken the lives of Levin Alexander Bonilla (October 27, 2018), Roberto Antonio Argueta Tejada and José Mario Rivera (August 28, 2019), Arnold Joaquín Morazán Erazo (October 13, 2020), Aly Dominguez and Jairo Bonilla (January 7, 2023), Óscar Oquelí Domínguez Ramos (June 15, 2023) and most recently Juan López (September 14, 2024).
The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project accompanies the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa and the Guapinol River defenders.
Video still: Juan Lopez, the father of two daughters, was killed one month ago today for protecting the Guapinol River from a megaproject.
We continue to follow all these threads.
Tweet by Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.
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