Energy

North Dakota Tribe’s Casino Takes $6 Million Hit From Pipeline Protesters

No featured image available

A casino run by the American Indian tribe opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline has lost millions of dollars thanks to months-long protest associated with the multi-billion-dollar oil project.

Standing Rock Sioux’s Prairie Knights Casino & Resort has reportedly taken a $6 million hit thanks in part to anti-DAPL opponents who have blocked roads, set fire to bridges leading into the reservation, and left thousands of tons of trash at protest campsites.

“There’s absolutely no doubt that the protests and the closing of the bridge have had a significant impact on people’s ability to get to the casino and just their comfort level driving down,” LaRoy Kingsley, spokesman for the reservation casino, said in a radio interview earlier in February.

There are other factors at play, he said, including bad weather and the energy industry dialing back its output, which could be related to the turmoil surrounding the DAPL.

“Our ag economy kind of slipped there last fall, we had the energy industry really dialing down, and then we ran into one of the worst December-January two-month periods as far as weather goes in many, many years,” Kingsley said. “They’ve really kind of run into a perfect storm situation with all of those things coming together at the same time.”

Recent reports show that Prairie Knights’ revenue nosedived from $14 million in 2015 to $8 million in 2016 – the casino earnings represent most of what is needed to keep the tribe’s social programs up and running.

The tribal council has stepped in with $3.2 million from its Dakota Access fundraising, but that’s “only going to get us so far,” tribal CFO Jerome Long Bottom told reporters. Standing Rock raised several million dollars through online campaigns shortly after the protests began.

“It’s like it’s fallen off a cliff,” Bottom said. “When the bridge was shut off, the numbers just plummeted.”

Environmentalist groups such as the Rainforest Action Network, meanwhile, argue the casino’s management should be blaming Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the multi-billion-dollar pipeline.

“The fact that casino management have allegedly cited activities by protesters does not in any way negate the reason for the protesters’ presence — which is the assault on human rights, the violation of Indigenous rights, the direct threat to clean water, the desecration of sacred lands,” Christopher J. Herrera, a spokesman for the group, told reporters in an interview.

Opposition to the DAPL escalated in January after President Donald Trump approved the previously rejected project, which is expected to deliver nearly 500,000 barrels of Bakken oil per day to Illinois.

Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter