Divest Now from The 30 Banks Polluting Sacred Ground with the Dakota Access Pipeline

Heard of the Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, HSBC or Wells Fargo? Not only are these the banks that own pretty much everything in America, but they are also among the very few financial institutions that are funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Food & Water Watch’s Hugh MacMillan just conducted an investigation proving that the Sioux Nation’s stand off at Standing Rock faces $3.8 billion dollars in dirty-money-power provided to Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. and Sunoco Logistics Partners, L.P. by Wall Street mega-banks such as Barclays, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, among others.

MacMillan told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now:

“Dakota Access, LLC, is a joint venture of Phillips 66 and a joint venture of two members of the Energy Transfer family—Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics. Enbridge and Marathon Oil have bought into this, this joint venture. Together, they now have about a 37 percent stake in the pipeline, in the Dakota Access pipeline.”

When asked how all these banks are involved, MacMillan stated:

“. . .they are banking on this company and banking on being able to drill and frack for the oil to send through the pipeline over the coming decades. So they’re providing the capital for the construction of this pipeline.”

The banks responsible for forcing the degradation of sacred grounds, as the Sioux would say, are:

• ABN AMRO Capital
• Bank of America
• Bank of Nova Scotia
• Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi
• Barclays
• BayernLB
• BNP Paribas
• Citibank
• Citizens Bank
• Comerica Bank
• Compass Bank
• Credit Agricole
• Credit Suisse
• Deutsche Bank
• DNB Capital/ASA
• DNB First Bank
• ICBC London
• ING Bank
• Intesa San Paolo
• JP Morgan Chase
• Mizuho Bank
• Natixis
• PNC Bank
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Societe General
• Sun Trust
• TD Securities
• US Bank
• Wells Fargo
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• HSBC Bank
• BNP Paribas
• Communit Trust
• SMBC Nikko Securities
• Société Générale

As MacMillan discovered:

“Seventeen financial institutions have loaned Dakota Access LLC $2.5 billion to construct the pipeline. Banks have also committed substantial resources to the Energy Transfer Family of companies so it can build out more oil and gas infrastructure:

• Energy Transfer Partners has a revolving credit line of $3.75 billion toward expanding its oil and gas infrastructure holdings, with commitments from just 26 banks.
• Sunoco Logistics has a credit line with $2.5 billion in commitments from just 24 banks.
• Energy Transfer Equity has a credit line with another $1.5 billion in commitments from most of the same big international banks.”

If you are vested in any of these banks and believe that the Sioux have rites to their sacred ancestral burial grounds, aside from the damage that oil and gas have done to our environment, and simply disgusted that more than 137,000 fracking wells have damaged our drinking water, I assure you that the world will support you in withdrawing your funds from these institutions.

We simply don’t need another thousand-mile pipeline.

Koch Industries has already had to pay a $35 million fine, due to a series of oil pipeline leaks in six states — Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri.

A Chevron pipeline has leaked from a welding flaw near Corinne, Utah, spilling about 100 barrels of Diesel fuel into the atmosphere contaminating water, air and soil.

Another pipeline failed and spilled over 192,000 US gallons (730,000 L) of crude oil in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Pennsylvania.

These are but a few in a list of HUNDREDS of pipeline disasters that are polluting our world.

In a Gallop poll, more than 73% of American people want energy that comes from something aside from oil and gas, but as Forbes has pointed out,

“. . . real power to control the world lies with four companies: McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poor’s, Northwestern Mutual, which owns Russell Investments, the index arm of which runs the benchmark Russell 1,000 and Russell 3,000, CME Group which owns 90% of Dow Jones Indexes, and Barclay’s, which took over Lehman Brothers and its Lehman Aggregate Bond Index, the dominant world bond fund index. Together, these four firms dominate the world of indexing. And in turn, that means they hold real sway over the world’s money.”

Who is greasing the wheels of society and allowing infrastructure that plows over ancient graves? Big Banks. It’s time to pull their plug.

Image credit: sunflower-alliance.org