A major oil company has faced significant penalties for polluting Native land. The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it had achieved a $241.5 million settlement with Marathon Oil for polluting the air at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with methane from natural gas flaring.
“This historic settlement — the largest ever civil penalty for violations of the Clean Air Act at stationary sources — will ensure cleaner air for the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and other communities in North Dakota, while holding Marathon accountable for its illegal pollution,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, established in 1870, is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples. Its creation was part of a prolonged process aimed at stopping years of violence and settler incursions into Native land in the northern plains of what is now the United States.
Despite oil being discovered there in 1951, federal bureaucracy controlling Native land initially made access difficult. Changes in regulations prior to the Bakken shale oil boom brought significant wealth to the area, although it was not evenly distributed, leading to conflict and even murder.
However, this economic boom incurred substantial environmental costs. One byproduct of natural gas drilling is “flaring,” where uncaptured natural gas is partially burned and released into the atmosphere. The Justice Department highlighted that methane, released in this process, is “a climate super-pollutant that is 25 times more potent in the near term than carbon dioxide.” Between 2012 and 2020, up to 240 billion cubic feet of natural gas could have been released on reservation land, according to Inside Climate News.
Most of the settlement funds are designated for mitigating future pollution rather than cash payments. Marathon will spend $170 million to reduce emissions at its Fort Berthold operations. The company will also pay $64.5 million, marking the largest fine of its kind.
Marathon Oil, currently involved in a $170 billion acquisition by ConocoPhillips, stated in a securities filing that it does not expect the mitigation expenditures, penalties, or injunctive relief resulting from the settlement to have a material adverse effect on its business, operations, or its merger agreement with ConocoPhillips.