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BALL, N.D. (AP) – The developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline says protesters who have camped on company land since the weekend are trespassing and will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”

Energy Transfer Partners said in a statement Tuesday that it wants all protesters to leave its land in North Dakota immediately.

More than 100 American Indians and others set up tents and teepees over the weekend on land the Dallas-based company acquired recently. That move put them right in the path of the four-state, thousand-mile pipeline for the first time.

The protesters argue the land rightfully belongs to Native Americans under a more than century-old treaty. But the local sheriff’s office has called it trespassing.

The Standing Rock Sioux and other protesters argue the pipeline is a threat to clean water. Energy Transfer Partners says the pipeline will be safe.