BISMARCK (North Dakota Monitor) — A federal district court judge indicated he will nullify a nearly $28 million judgment against the federal government related to costs North Dakota incurred during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests so the parties can reach a settlement.

North Dakota is still set to receive a payment Attorney General Drew Wrigley described as satisfactory, but attorneys would not disclose the amount during a Friday hearing.

Attorneys for the United States and North Dakota said the settlement would allow the parties to avoid litigating the case in appeals court,putting the nearly seven-year-old lawsuit to rest.

“We’re hoping we really don’t need to fight any further,” Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Guynn said during the hearing.

The lawsuit, filed in 2019, concerns demonstrations against the construction of the crude oil pipeline, also known as DAPL, that took place in rural south-central North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.

North Dakota claims the federal government caused the protests to grow in size and intensity by unlawfully allowing demonstrators to camp on federal land. The state says it had to pay millions of dollars on policing and cleaning up the encampments as a result. The United States denies the state’s allegations.

North Dakota U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor in April 2025 sided with the state and ordered the executive branch to pay North Dakota the $28 million sum, a decision the U.S. Department of Justice later appealed to the 8th Circuit.

If the settlement moves forward, North Dakota would receive a “substantial monetary payment” from the United States, attorneys said Friday. As a condition of the agreement, the Department of Justice wants Traynor’s judgment and three other orders in which he ruled against the United States to be voided. That includes the court’s 120-page ruling from April 2025.

Both parties said Friday that having the rulings nullified wouldn’t have a significant negative impact on the public, since the documents could still be cited even if they no longer hold the weight of court orders.

At the same time, Guynn said the Department of Justice wants the orders vacated because it doesn’t want the legal conclusions Traynor made to influence the outcome of future lawsuits.

“The downstream consequences of keeping these on the books is troublesome for the United States,” he said during the hearing. If Traynor does not agree to axe the rulings, the United States would likely no longer be willing to settle and move forward with its appeal instead, Guynn added.

Traynor’s orders make findings about the federal government’s responsibility under the Federal Tort Claims Act — the law North Dakota filed the suit under — which the state noted previously in court filings “could have utility holding the federal government to account” in the future.

Still, attorneys for the state said they believe this trade-off is outweighed by the time and money the public would save by not going through the appeals process. North Dakota would also avoid the risk of having Traynor’s judgment overturned by higher courts.

Wrigley said the settlement will be made public once it’s finalized.

The United States’ appeal of Traynor’s decision has been on hold since last summer, when the state and federal government informed the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals they had started settlement negotiations and wished to pause the case.

The 8th Circuit will have to first send the case back to Traynor before he could grant the parties’ requests.

The case went to trial in Bismarck in early 2024. During the four-week trial, the court heard from witnesses including former governors Doug Burgum and Jack Dalrymple, Native activists, federal officials and law enforcement.

The Dakota Access Pipeline carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois. It crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which prompted the tribe to begin protesting the pipeline on the grounds that it poses a threat to its water supply and sovereignty.

North Dakota’s lawsuit originally requested $38 million in damages from the federal government. Traynor ordered the executive branch to pay $28 million since the U.S. Department of Justice previously gave the state $10 million as compensation for costs it spent related to the protests.

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – North Dakota leaders unveiled an initiative aimed at getting more oil out of the Bakken, using enhanced oil recovery and CO₂.

Senator John Hoeven said the effort is getting a boost from $36 million from the Department of Energy for “Crack the Code 2.0,” a $157 million initiative with state and industry funding.

Hoeven said the goal is to use CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery, calling it “an important, usable, valuable commodity” and saying, “We’re linking our coal plants with our oil and gas producing companies to do it.”

Funding will be used to develop technology to make enhanced oil recovery profitable and viable, and then implement it in North Dakota oil fields in a number of pilot projects.

Hoeven said current recovery rates in the Bakken are limited.

“We’re only producing about 10 to 12% of the oil out of that shale,” he said, “But with EOR, advanced oil recovery techniques, we can double it. We can take it from 10 to 12% up to 25% or better.”

Hoeven said the effort is also tied to electricity demand, saying North Dakota will “produce more electricity for a company that wants to do AI, that wants to do data centers, needs more and more electricity,” and that “it isn’t just about oil and gas.”

North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said the pilot projects are expected to start soon.

“We hope to see these pilots putting their technologies into the ground sometime late this year, first quarter of next year,” said Ness.

“So I would expect by this time next year, we’re going to maybe potentially begin to see what are some of the results early on,” Ness added. “And again, this is going to take multiple, multiple swings at this thing. It’s not going to just happen. If it was easy, we’d be doing it. Nobody’s done it anywhere in the world. This is where we’re going to crack the code.”

Three years after a deal with Fairview was called off, South Dakota-based Sanford Health is getting into the Twin Cities market with a new merger.

On Friday, the health system announced that it will combine with North Memorial Health.

Fairview, Sanford call off planned merger

Under the merger, Sanford says the organization will invest $600 million to strengthen the Robbinsdale hospital and double the Maple Grove hospital’s size.

Sanford is the largest rural nonprofit health system in the country, with 58 hospitals and roughly 56,000 employees across the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. North Memorial operates two hospitals in Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, along with several other clinics, employing more than 6,500 people.

If completed, the health systems plan to keep some local leadership in place, including North Memorial CEO Trevor Sawallish, and two North Memorial board members will serve on the combined system’s board. However, the overall company will be led by Sanford CEO Bill Gassen.

The companies say they expect the merger to close later this year, as long as regulatory processes don’t cause delays.

Sanford’s previous attempt to merge with Fairview was called off in 2023, eight months after initially announcing the planned merger. Many Minnesotans raised concerns about that transaction, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, although some of that was due to the University of Minnesota’s partnership with Fairview and the possibility of an out-of-state company running the state’s flagship medical school.

As with most mergers, concerns are still likely to arise about possible cutbacks and the impact on the state’s healthcare quality. However, the deal seems more likely to be completed than Sanford’s past attempts.

Reaction

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa, who represents over 1,000 workers at North Memorial, called the news “worrisome.”

“At a time when healthcare costs are skyrocketing for Minnesota families and frontline healthcare workers are getting squeezed by short staffing levels, this latest attempt at consolidation brings many concerns. It is especially concerning because previous merger attempts by Sanford Health to come into Minnesota have failed due to their values and corporate behavior,” the union said.

SEIU also called on Ellison “to use all of his office’s powers within the law to provide oversight into this proposed merger and ensure the interests of Minnesota’s workers and patients are protected.”

Ellison’s office is asking the public to submit information through an online Community Input Form.

“As we have done and are currently doing with other healthcare transactions, we are conducting a thorough review of this potential acquisition to ensure it complies with the law and is in the public interest,” Ellison daid. “Proposed health care consolidation requires careful examination. As long as I am Attorney General, I will use the full range of regulatory tools to protect Minnesotans’ access to quality, affordable healthcare.”

The Minnesota Nurses Association released a statement saying it is “deeply concerned” by the merger announcement, warning it “could have far-reaching consequences for patients, healthcare workers, and the communities they serve.”

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