"Blackstone also has a considerable stake in the Dakota Access Pipeline through its acquisition of Harvest Fund Advisors, a financial firm focused on investing in oil and gas infrastructure. According to regulatory filings, Harvest Fund owns 16.6% of outstanding shares of Energy Transfer Partners, which is a 38.25% owner of Dakota Access and 3.9% of outstanding shares of Energy Transfer Equity, ETP's parent organization. Harvest Fund Advisors also owns 4.4% of outstanding shares of MPLX LP, a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum that is a partial Dakota Access owner through a joint venture with Enbridge.
Dakota Access-which was halted by former President Barack Obama after months of public outcry over the threat the pipeline posed to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, only to be resumed once Donald Trump took office-went into service in June 2017.
Blackstone's stake in ETP through Harvest Fund also means that it owns a stake in the controversial Bayou Bridge Pipeline planned along the southern coast of Louisiana. Bayou Bridge will bring crude oil from a hub Nederland, Texas (which is connected to Dakota Access by the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline) to refineries in St. James parish, Louisiana. The pipeline, which is co-owned by ETP and Phillips 66, has inspired protests similar to those against Dakota Access as well as a lawsuit on behalf of the communities that will bear the brunt of the pipeline's negative impacts.
These pipeline interests, and other Blackstone oil and gas investments can be seen in the map embedded below:
As CEO of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, Stephen Schwarzman has a financial stake in every sector of the oil and gas industry. In recent years, Blackstone has invested more than $7 billion into oil and gas projects and recently acquired Harvest Fund Advisors, which controls nearly $10 billion in oil and gas assets, for an undisclosed sum.
Beyond pipelines, Blackstone is invested in the fracking operations that extract oil and gas from the ground. The firm entered into a joint partnership with Sanchez Resources to buy a $2.3 billion interest in drilling fields in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. In 2016, Blackstone"