A major oil company has agreed to pay a significant fine for years of polluting Native land. The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it 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,” stated Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, was formally established in 1870 by executive order. Its creation aimed to halt years of violence and settler incursions into Native land in the northern plains of what is now the United States, though it failed to achieve this goal.
In 2012, High Country News reported that despite oil being discovered on the territory in 1951, federal U.S. bureaucracy made it difficult to access due to strict controls over Native land. This bureaucracy was reduced ahead of the Bakken shale oil boom, which brought significant wealth to the area, where poverty rates remain double the national average. However, this wealth was unevenly distributed, resulting in conflict and, in some cases, violence.
This economic boost came at a significant environmental cost. Natural gas drilling often involves “flaring,” where excess gas is partially burned off and released into the atmosphere. The Justice Department noted that methane, a byproduct of this process, is a “climate super-pollutant” that is 25 times more potent in the near term than carbon dioxide. Inside Climate News reported that up to 240 billion cubic feet of natural gas was released on reservation land between 2012 and 2020.
Most of the settlement money will be used for emission reduction efforts. Marathon Oil will spend $170 million to reduce emissions at its Fort Berthold operations and will also pay $64.5 million, the largest-ever fine of its kind, according to the Justice Department.
Marathon Oil, currently undergoing a $170 billion acquisition by ConocoPhillips, stated in a securities filing that “we do not believe that the mitigation expenditures, penalties, and injunctive relief resulting from this settlement will have a material adverse effect on our business or operations or the previously announced Agreement and Plan of Merger with ConocoPhillips.”