Kitco
By Lenzy Krebiel-Burton/ REUTERS
Friday March 03, 2017
PAWNEE, Okla., March 3 (Reuters) - The Pawnee Nation
filed a lawsuit on Friday in tribal court in Oklahoma against 27 oil and gas
producers, seeking damages for an earthquake they said was caused from man-made
activity related to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The Native American group claimed that wastewater
injected into disposal wells helped trigger a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in
September, the strongest on record in the state, that damaged several Pawnee
Nation buildings, including several that are more than 100 years old. Lawyers
for the Pawnee Nation said they believe the case is the first of its sort filed
in a tribal court. They are seeking at least $250,000 in damages.
Most of the companies were listed as "John
Does" in court papers.
Attorneys for two of the companies named in the suit,
Oklahoma City-based Cummings Oil and Tulsa-based Eagle Road Oil, could not be
reached for comment.
The American Bar Association said the civil powers of
tribal courts extend to "consensual relations" with non-members and
non-Indians, including contractual relations.
Headquartered about 60 miles (100 km) west of Tulsa,
the Pawnee Nation has 3,500 enrolled tribal citizens. It has a separate
earthquake-related lawsuit pending in federal court against the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management.
One tribal building was declared structurally unsound
after the earthquake, forcing officials to move two departments and a branch of
government, the lawyers said.
"We've already been forced out of our homelands
in Nebraska," Pawnee Nation Executive Director Andrew Knife Chief told
reporters.
"Our home is now here in Oklahoma and has been
since the 1870s. The destruction of our buildings is too high a price for our
nation to bear," he said.
In December, Oklahoma said it was imposing guidelines
to reduce the risk of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing in its
oil-rich shale formations, the first rules in the state to target the energy
production technique. The move by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission's Oil and
Gas Conservation Division and the Oklahoma Geological Survey came as
earthquakes in the state have risen sharply since the shale boom and the use of
fracking…..
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