- Whiting Petroleum (WLL +2.2%) CEO Jim Volker says the standoff over the Dakota Access pipeline could be solved by providing economic opportunities, including supply and delivery contracts, to the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native Americans.
- Volker, who runs Nakota dakota top oil producer, says he is sensitive to the tribe's concerns that construction of the pipeline would disturb ancestral burial sites and other historical areas, but he says the recent move by lead pipeline owner Energy Transfer Partners (ETP +0.2%) to buy more than 6K acres of land adjacent to the pipeline's route "increases the odds that things get done."
- Standing Rock Sioux chairman Dave Archambault says his opposition to the pipeline has little to do with economics, since "if this pipeline goes through, we will be the first to pay the cost" in destruction of tribal burial sites and possibly the pollution of the tribe's water supply.