A final environmental impact statement
Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) quietly issued a final environmental impact statement for Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Texas. It required Cheniere to agree to 104 special conditions to ensure that the environment is protected, and it allowed the project to move forward. Ten days prior, FERC issued a similar approval for Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export facility in Maryland. Like the Cheniere approval, FERC required Dominion to adhere to 79 special conditions to protect the environment. It will do that, and the project is moving forward.
No drama. No congressional hearings or presidential proclamations. It was all so…normal.
Kind of nice, isn’t it?
A couple things happened to get us to this point. The meritless arguments from “not in my back yard” opponents and law firms masquerading as environmental groups didn’t hold water with FERC. The protests petered out. (Which, for what it’s worth is what happens when you protest FERC on a Sunday, when it is closed.) The Department of Energy finally figured how to get itself out of the way and stop causing unnecessary delays. Freed from these regulatory constraints, the environmental permitting process was allowed to work properly. And so it did.
So with an election just a few weeks away, and with it the hope that the 114th Congress can actually work together on energy policy, it’s reassuring to see that on LNG exports at least we have reached a “new normal” whereby companies wanting to take on these projects actually get a yes or no answer in a reasonable amount of time. However, it’s worth reminding everyone that Keystone XL has been waiting on a final permit decision for six years, coal exports in the Pacific Northwest are fighting uphill to just get their permits heard, and countless other projects are caught in permit limbo. Getting infrastructure projects moving and getting shovels in the ground is a bipartisan priority. Let’s use this “new normal” on LNG as a stepping stone to even better things.
- See more at: http://www.shopfloor.org/2014/10/recent-approvals-signal-new-normal-for-lng-exports/32315#sthash.MZWLdL0w.dpuf