OPINION:
When a court rules against you, you have two choices: Accept the outcome or spin it. Greenpeace has chosen spin.
On June 3, the Amsterdam District Court in the Netherlands delivered a significant blow to Greenpeace’s legal strategy against Energy Transfer.
The court rejected Greenpeace’s attempt to invoke the European Union’s Anti-SLAPP Directive, the central pillar of the legal theory the organization has spent years promoting (and in which it has invested significant resources). The court ruled that the directive simply does not apply to this case.
Greenpeace responded by calling the decision a victory.
It is not, and the gap between what the court decided and what Greenpeace is announcing to the world tells you everything you need to know about how this organization operates.
Let us be clear about what happened in Amsterdam. The court allowed Greenpeace’s Dutch case to proceed, but under Dutch tort law, a framework the author characterizes as placing a higher burden of proof on Greenpeace.
That is not a win. That is a forced migration to harder ground after losing the easier path.
The ruling did not overturn or weaken the North Dakota verdict, handed down in March 2025, which found Greenpeace liable on multiple claims, including defamation and tortious interference, stemming from its 2016 and 2017 protests of the company’s Dakota Access Pipeline.
The ruling did not question Energy Transfer’s conduct or relieve Greenpeace of its potential obligation to post a bond of up to $25 million while appeals proceed.
The verdict and bond obligation stand. Nothing in Amsterdam changes now either.
What Amsterdam did do is strip away Greenpeace’s preferred framing. For years, the organization has characterized Energy Transfer’s lawsuit as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, designed to bully activists into silence.
A North Dakota jury, after hearing all the evidence, found Greenpeace liable on multiple claims and returned a verdict of nearly $667 million. A judge subsequently reduced that award to $345 million. That verdict does not describe a meritless case. It describes an organization that crossed legal lines and got held accountable.
Greenpeace’s international network is now attempting to use foreign courts to relitigate what an American jury has already decided. That should concern every American who cares about energy security, economic stability or the rule of law.
Here is why this matters beyond one pipeline company and one activist organization. Energy Transfer moves roughly 30% of America’s natural gas. That gas heats homes, powers hospitals, fuels manufacturing, and keeps the lights on for millions of American families. What happens to Energy Transfer has real consequences for real people.
Yet the broader economic stakes go further than any single company. Energy infrastructure is financed over decades. Pipelines, generation assets and distribution networks attract investment only when investors can reasonably predict what legal and regulatory environment they will face over that horizon.
When foreign courts are invited to second-guess projects that have already cleared American permitting and survived American judicial review, investors face a new layer of uncertainty. That uncertainty raises the cost of capital and slows development. It shrinks domestic capacity at exactly the moment when the country needs more of it.
Electricity demand is projected to rise sharply through 2050, driven by reshoring, data center expansion and electrification. Meeting that demand requires committing billions in new infrastructure now. Those commitments are harder to make when activist groups can challenge completed, permitted, operating American infrastructure in a Dutch courtroom.
If Greenpeace prevails in the Netherlands, the precedent will not be limited to pipelines. Any operator of critical infrastructure in any sector could face open-ended liability in foreign courts, regardless of how a project performed under domestic law.
The signal to investors would be unmistakable: Building American infrastructure carries risks that American courts cannot fully resolve. The result would be fewer projects, delayed capacity and higher prices.
That last point is not abstract. At its peak since the Iran war began, Brent crude surged more than 55% and reached nearly $120 a barrel. American energy production and the infrastructure that moves it are not luxuries. They are the buffer between geopolitical chaos abroad and economic pain at home.
Constraining domestic capacity in this environment compounds the pressure on households already paying more for everything.
Greenpeace is entitled to advocate for its worldview. It is not entitled to misrepresent court decisions to advance a narrative that the facts do not support.
The Amsterdam court did not validate Greenpeace. It rejected the organization’s core legal theory and sent the case to a more difficult terrain. That is not a victory. Americans who depend on reliable, affordable energy should not let anyone pretend otherwise.
• Jason Isaac is the founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute.
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