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First Nations tribes in Canada and the US have started flexing their muscles, successfully delaying pipeline projects on both sides of the border. Indications are that this effort is becoming more organized and may play a larger role in infrastructure decisions across the continent.

Tribal action is behind the delays encountered by Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Tribes are demanding more consultation and, in some cases, opposing expansion of energy infrastructure altogether.

That effort reached a new level in late September, when First Nations and tribal chiefs gathered simultaneously at Musqueam in Vancouver and Mohawk in Montreal to sign a new continent-wide treaty and form an alliance committing nearly 50 other bands in Canada and the US to stop all proposed oil sands pipeline, tanker and rail projects in their territorial lands and waters.

“What this treaty means is that from Quebec, we will work with our First Nation allies in BC [British Columbia] to make sure that the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline does not pass and we will also work with our tribal allies in Minnesota as they take on Enbridge’s Line 3 expansion, and we know they’ll help us do the same against Energy East,” Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon said in a statement.

The collective stance will have a major impact on the Liberal Party government, which was voted into power last November on the promise of granting a larger say for stakeholders and particularly First Nation bands in British Columbia in any oil pipeline approval and building process.

“This whole issue in relative. They have always been bold and we will see that happening in the future,” Chris Bloomer, president of the  Canadian Energy Pipelines Association, told Platts.

“Compared with the previous Conservative Party government, First Nations feel they have an ally in the Liberals now and feel their voices will be heard more clearly.”

Canadian projects in doubt

Building new crude oil pipelines and the relentless debates about such pursuits have in the past several years proved to be a comprehensively futile exercise in Canada. In fact, there is little public memory of when an export pipeline was last built from land-locked Alberta—the nerve center of Canada’s oil production.

The debate is raging once again, and will have long-term implications for the future of Western Canada’s ailing oil indust...