Pipeline Resistance Team

Who we are

Every Minnesotan deserves a just and carbon-free future. But fossil fuel companies like Enbridge use northern Minnesota as a conduit to move some of the world’s dirtiest oil from the extraction zone in Alberta to regional and global refineries. These pipelines violate treaty rights and Indigenous sovereignty, and the low-cost shipping that they provide allows the industry to thrive while standing in the way of cheaper and cleaner energy sources.

MN350’s Pipeline Resistance Team is reversing the climate crisis and bringing about a more just world through mass movement work to stop fossil fuel infrastructure, especially the tar sands pipelines that cross our state.

JOIN US: Sign our Pipeline Pledge of Resistance!

 

We engage in education, advocacy, event planning, nonviolent direct action, mutual aid, coalition building, and other creative tactics to shut off the supply of fossil fuels, accelerating the transition to more equitable and lower carbon solutions that let people live a good life without oil or gas. We strive to foster a healthy, just, and growing movement, where a diversity of individuals and groups are supported, with a shared understanding that we are all treaty people.

 

 

What we’re working on
  • Organizing to stop Enbridge’s Line 5 Reroute in northern Wisconsin, which would threaten the lands and waters of the Bad River Band
  • Educating Minnesotans about the risks of tar sands oil and Enbridge pipelines
  • Changing the rules so that new fossil fuel pipelines can’t be built in Minnesota and existing ones are shut down

We also track issues related to electric vehicle accessibility (since much of the oil that crosses Minnesota on pipelines is for gasoline / transportation fuel) and proposed CO2 pipelines (which are a so-called false solution to the climate crisis, with unjust local impacts on the communities they would cross). Check out the inspiring work by our friends at Native Sun on building out electric vehicle infrastructure!

We want you!

Pipeline Resistance Team is made up of dedicated volunteer organizers along with a staff support person. We are volunteer powered and we welcome you! We meet every other Thursday night from 6:30-8:30pm CT. Due to the pandemic, we are meeting virtually via Zoom. If you want to get involved in our organizing, email Andy at andy@mn350.org and we’ll connect.

You can also look for upcoming events from our team and others at mn350.org/events.

Our history

Pipeline Resistance Team has been organizing against fossil fuel infrastructure in Minnesota since 2013. We fought the Alberta Clipper Phase II Expansion, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Sandpiper project, which was defeated in 2016 through a broad coalition effort. We have often organized against projects by the Canadian pipeline corporation Enbridge, which uses northern Minnesota as a conduit to move some of the world’s dirtiest oil from the extraction zone in Alberta to regional and global refineries. Extracting and burning tar sands oil is incompatible with a stable climate. Pipelines allow this industry to thrive — without the low cost shipping pipelines provide, the tar sands industry would be replaced by cheaper and cleaner energy sources.

 

For much of the past several years, we fought Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which carved a new route for tar sands oil through the water-rich Mississippi Headwaters and land protected by Anishinaabe treaties. From the day the project was proposed in 2014, we organized opposition through people power in the regulatory process and the political arena, and when construction unfortunately began in 2020, we supported frontline efforts to galvanize national attention and block construction through nonviolent direct action. We continue to organize toward shutting the pipeline down even though it is now in operation. Our efforts and those of allies delayed the project by four years, averting carbon emissions equal to the annual pollution from 200 coal power plants, but long-term damage was done to the land and water that Enbridge built through, in violation of treaty rights and Indigenous sovereignty, and around 1,000 water protectors were arrested or cited for brave acts of resistance. Supporting the people in our movement community who made huge sacrifices over the course of this fight continues to be very important to our team. 

 

It’s also important that we educate ourselves and one another about the treaties that were made and broken in the state of Minnesota. These treaties belong to all of us, Native and non-Native, and it’s each of our responsibility to fight for treaty rights. Pipeline infrastructure often threatens these treaty-guaranteed rights. We are all treaty people. 

 

For more on Line 3, see MN350’s Giant Step Backward report as well as stopline3.org. To learn more about treaties that impact the land we now know as Minnesota, sign MN350’s Pledge to Honor the Treaties.

 

Line 3 is part of Enbridge’s Mainline System, a multi-pipeline corridor that stretches from Alberta to Illinois with connections to refineries and export terminals in the Gulf Coast. Moving ahead, we see the critical importance of shutting down multiple points in this system, including Line 3 as well as its sister pipelines, to end extraction and consumption of tar sands oil and move Minnesota and the world closer to climate justice.