Navajo Nation officials claim El Paso Natural Gas Co. (EPNG) is manipulating the facts and attempting to bypass the tribe's sovereignty by going directly to the Interior Department in an attempt to get a better right-of-way deal for its pipeline across tribal land.
The Arizona Republic reports EPNG wants the U.S. Department of the Interior's approval of a pipeline right-of-way easement that would allow the Houston-based company to continue shipping natural gas throughout the Southwest. The move is unusual because EPNG has yet to strike a financial deal with the tribe, typically a required step before the feds consider such an application.
EPNG officials told the Arizona Republic that the tribe's demands have been unreasonable and could result in higher bills for customers such as Southwest Gas, which supplies natural gas to a half-million Arizona homes.
Navajo Nation Attorney General Louis Denetsosie says EPNG is trying to scare consumers into thinking the Navajo Nation is profiteering from scarce energy supplies in its bid to renegotiate a better rights-of-way deal for itself.
“If anyone is profiteering at the expense of customers, it is El Paso,” Denetsosie said
El Paso has employed a variety of avenues to obtain rights to Navajo Nation land for inadequate consideration, Denetsosie said. For instance, in the recent federal energy legislation, it sought unsuccessfully to get Congress to violate solemn promises of the United States in its treaties with the Navajo Nation.
“It is now apparently seeking to obtain a 20-year renewal of its rights-of-way without Navajo Nation consent using the Navajo Nation’s federal trustee, the Secretary of the Interior,” the attorney general said. “Its most recent gambit is a public relations strategy to scare consumers and regulators alike.”
Denetsosie said consumers have no reason to be concerned. He said the Navajo Nation has offered reasonable terms for a 20-year renewal of EPNG’s rights-of-way. If accepted by the company, the effect would be “utterly insignificant from the consumers’ perspective,” he said. “EPNG’s competitors have accepted comparable terms,” Mr. Denetsosie added. “El Paso simply wants to return the Navajo Nation to the earlier times when rights-of-way over Native American lands were granted by the United States for nominal consideration, thus gaining a competitive advantage over other gas pipeline companies.”
Denetsosie emphasized that the Navajo Nation is willing to agree on reasonable terms with EPNG. “But we will not willingly submit to the type of predatory behavior that El Paso has visited on other groups in recent years, most notably California and Arizona consumers,” he said.
Keith Harper, attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said the tribe has a right to negotiate its own terms and doubts the federal government would become involved in the negotiations. ''I think if the Interior gets involved in undermining the decision-making right of a sovereign nation, they are treading on very shaky ground,'' Harper said, according to The Associated Press.
Furthermore, Harper said studies have shown that Native Americans historically have been short-changed in right-of-way negotiations with utilities and oil companies.
A 2003 study of such transactions showed individual Native American property owners were reimbursed an average of $25 for every 3 yards of pipeline, compared with the non-Native rate of $135 and up for a similar-sized stretch of pipeline.
Denetsosie points out that under a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) settlement in March 2003, El Paso agreed to pay more than $1.7 billion to California customers to settle lawsuits claiming El Paso manipulated the natural gas markets.
Denetsosie says, "El Paso is currently seeking higher tariffs from FERC over its western pipeline system and, in lieu of settlement payments, is offering favorable rates to California customers, placing the burden of the higher rate adjustment on east-of-California customers." Sources: Arizona Republic, Arizona Central, Navajo Nation, Indian Country Today
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