Stand With Standing RockCANNON BALL – Audio released by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribefrom a September 2014 meeting with Dakota Access Pipeline representatives contradicts recent claims made by a pipeline company executive.
Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access LLC, told The Wall Street Journal the pipeline route that crosses just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation could have been changed if the tribe had engaged in discussions sooner.
“I really wish for the Standing Rock Sioux that they had engaged in discussions way before they did. I don’t think we would have been having this discussion if they did,” Warren said in a Wall Street Journal interview published Nov. 16. “We could have changed the route. It could have been done, but it’s too late.”
However, the recording provides audio from a Sept. 30, 2014, meeting in which Standing Rock officials expressed their opposition to the pipeline and raised concerns about its potential impact to sacred sites and their water supply — nearly two years before they raised similar objections in a federal lawsuit.