Meet the Texas billionaire and GOP donor behind the North Dakota pipeline controversy

Over the Labor Day weekend, security guards for a petro pipeline company used attack dogs and pepper spray against Native Americans resisting construction of a $3.8 billion pipeline through North Dakota, a project they say is desecrating land sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and putting critical water supplies at risk of contamination.

If completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline would carry crude from the nearby Bakken oilfields to Illinois, where it would meet an existing pipeline that would transport the oil to Texas. That's the home state of the billionaire and major Republican political donor behind the project: Kelcy Warren, chair of Energy Transfer Equity of Dallas, a company that's No. 65 on this year's Fortune 500 list.

The controversy around the Dakota Access Pipeline made a personal visit to Warren last week, as about 200 protesters, many of them Native Americans, showed up outside his company's Dallas offices for a demonstration. Organizer Yolanda Bluehorse of the American Indian Movement of Central Texas told the Dallas Morning News that the protestors "hope the big billionaires and higher ups can see us."

https://www.facingsouth.org/2016/09/meet-texas-billionaire-and-gop-donor-behind-north-dakota-pipeline-controversy