A major oil company is paying a hefty fine for years of polluting Native land. The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had secured a $241.5 million settlement from Marathon Oil for contaminating the air of 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,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement accompanying the announcement.
The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, was formally established in 1870 by executive order. Its creation was part of a years-long process that aimed to end years of violence and settler incursions into Native land in the northern plains of what is now the United States.
High Country News reported in 2012 that despite oil being discovered on the territory in 1951, federal U.S. bureaucracy that strictly controls Native land made it difficult to access. That bureaucracy was reduced ahead of the Bakken shale oil boom, which flooded money into the area where poverty remains double the national rate. These new riches were very unequally distributed, leading to significant conflict and, in some cases, murder.
However, this financial boon came at a substantial environmental cost. Natural gas drilling produces “flaring,” where natural gas not captured by drilling operations is partly burned off and released into the atmosphere. The Justice Department highlighted that methane, one of these gases, is “a climate super-pollutant that is 25 times more potent in the near term than carbon dioxide.” According to Inside Climate News, as much as 240 billion cubic feet of natural gas was released on reservation land between 2012 and 2020.
Most of the settlement money isn’t being handed over in cash. Marathon Oil has committed to spending $170 million to reduce emissions at its Fort Berthold operations. The company will also pay a $64.5 million fine, which the Justice Department says is the largest-ever instance of such a penalty.
Marathon Oil, currently in the midst of a $170 billion acquisition by ConocoPhillips, stated in a securities filing, “we do not believe that the mitigation expenditures, penalties, and injunctive relief that resulted from this settlement will have a material adverse effect on either our business or operations or the previously announced Agreement and Plan of Merger with ConocoPhillips.”