The Dutch Lawsuit That Could Undermine U.S. Energy Security

By Michael Toth

Monday, July 06, 2026

 

For a snapshot of what has gone wrong in Europe, look no further than Amsterdam, where Greenpeace International sued the American pipeline company Energy Transfer last year.

 

Filed on the eve of a North Dakota jury trial that would culminate in a headline-grabbing nine-figure verdict against Greenpeace, the lawsuit encapsulates Europe’s defining pathologies: regulatory overreach, hostility toward energy development, and a growing willingness to weaponize the legal system against political opponents.

 

The Amsterdam-based environmental group is, in effect, seeking damages for losing a case in the United States. If Greenpeace International succeeds, it would establish a troubling precedent for relitigating legal defeats abroad, eroding American sovereignty, chilling investment, and undermining transatlantic energy security.

 

The dispute traces back to a decade-old fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, which carries roughly 4 percent of America’s daily oil production. In 2016, Greenpeace joined efforts to stop its construction, but the protests did not remain within the bounds of constitutionally protected expression. They instead devolved into trespassing, vandalism, and violence, as the court acknowledged.

 

As one federal judge put it when weighing emergency relief, the claim that the demonstrations were entirely protected by the First Amendment “defies commonsense and reality.”

 

The disruption caused delays that cost Energy Transfer and its partner entities an estimated $7.5 billion. The company pursued litigation to recover those losses, first filing federal racketeering and state tort claims against Greenpeace and others in federal court. The federal case was later dismissed after the court concluded that the racketeering charges lacked merit and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the remaining state law claims, leaving them for state court.

 

Energy Transfer then refiled those claims in North Dakota. At trial, it presented evidence that Greenpeace disseminated false claims that the project would obstruct tribal lands and provided “massive” support for the protests, including training and equipping participants with lockboxes used to attach themselves to pipeline equipment. In March 2025, after a three-week trial, a North Dakota jury found Greenpeace liable and awarded more than $660 million, later reduced by the trial judge to $345 million.

 

The fight has now shifted overseas, where Greenpeace International is asking a Dutch court to revisit the legal battle. The case relies on the European Parliament’s 2024 directive designed to deter litigation aimed at silencing free speech and public participation, otherwise known as “strategic litigation against public participation” or “SLAPP,” and was recently allowed to proceed under similar anti-SLAPP provisions in the Dutch Civil Code law. In May, the North Dakota Supreme Court ordered Greenpeace International to refrain from attacking the jury verdict while permitting a “narrowly tailored” argument in the Netherlands regarding other aspects of the dispute.

 

Greenpeace argues that the case is about more than the North Dakota judgment, framing it as a challenge to Energy Transfer’s “repeated abusive lawsuits and defamatory statements.” But at its core, the lawsuit seeks relief from the consequences of that litigation. Greenpeace has itself acknowledged that the $345 million judgment could bankrupt the organization.

 

A ruling for Greenpeace would open the door to relitigating American verdicts in foreign courts. American legal sovereignty is weakened when foreign jurisdictions can effectively revisit domestic jury outcomes simply because one party dislikes the result.

 

It would also export Europe’s increasingly politicized legal climate to the United States. With AI-driven electricity demand rising, the need for new energy infrastructure is becoming more urgent. Investors are unlikely to finance large-scale projects if returns can be disrupted by foreign litigation long after domestic courts have resolved disputes.

 

Beyond economics lies a national-security dimension. Any precedent that destabilizes cross-border energy investment would run counter to the logic of the $750 billion U.S.–EU energy cooperation framework aimed at strengthening European energy security and reducing reliance on Russia and other unreliable suppliers.

 

Energy Transfer alone transports roughly 30 percent of U.S. natural gas, supplying fuel for millions of homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses. Without adequate pipeline infrastructure, producers are often forced to burn off excess natural gas because there is no way to transport it to market.

 

The Dakota Access Pipeline should never have been controversial in the first place. Pipelines are simply a means of transporting oil and gas; they neither create energy supply nor increase demand. The real question is (or ought to be) whether societies have access to affordable, abundant, and reliable energy.

 

Europeans ought to know better. When Greenpeace was protesting the pipeline in 2016, the Netherlands still obtained nearly a quarter of its energy from Russia. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine transformed that dependence into a strategic liability, helping drive energy prices sharply higher across the continent. Millions of Europeans struggled to heat their homes, and cold-related hardship rose significantly.

 

That is the trajectory of energy unrealism. It’s a story that could repeat itself in the United States if foreign courts gain the power to unwind the consequences of domestic energy disputes after the fact.