Why the Dakota Access Pipeline could mean trouble for banks

In North Dakota, thousands of tribal leaders and activists are camped along the Cannonball River by the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to resist the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). Once complete, the pipeline is expected to carry 570,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois. Opponents, chief among them the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, argue that the project threatens supplies of drinking water and has already destroyed sacred sites, including burial grounds. The tribe recently filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for the federal lands the pipeline will cross and which granted permits to Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based energy company sponsoring DAPL. Recently, after a federal judge denied the request to halt construction, the Obama administration overruled the decision. But the move is only temporary. In addition to pursuing justice through legal means, a new potentially powerful strategy to combat construction was announced on September 3 during a rally at the encampment. Beginning that day, protest organizers launched a two-week call for action against the financial institutions bankrolling DAPL. It was recently revealed that more than two dozen