45 Public Interest organizations and landowners call on FERC to reject Gas Industry proposal to fast-track Major Projects with less transparency and public scrutiny 

WASHINGTON – The Southern Environmental Law Center, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council, together with 41 additional national, regional, and community organizations and two individual landowners, filed comments today urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject a new proposal to automatically authorize gas projects under $30 million -— and provide an arbitrarily abbreviated process with just 60 days for public notice and response for projects costing up to $86 million and some categories of projects, including expansions compressor stations that have demonstrated harms on public health, would have no cost limit at all for blanket certification, and others, including receipt point projects and certain liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and synthetic gas facilities, would be automatically authorized. 

FERC created the blanket certificate program in 1982 to streamline approval of routine, well-understood pipeline work. Major projects ordinarily receive a case-specific review under the Natural Gas Act, which requires FERC to determine that a project is actually needed and that its public benefits outweigh the harms to customers, landowners, communities, and the environment. FERC began reconsidering the program after receiving a petition from the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, the trade association for interstate gas pipelines. 

The coalition warns that the plan could leave families and small businesses paying for costly infrastructure built to benefit new or specific customers, while giving landowners and nearby communities little to no meaningful opportunity to understand and challenge projects that could affect them. It would also effectively create a dangerous regulatory loophole where major gas infrastructure projects are automatically authorized with little to no meaningful regulatory or public oversight. The gas industry demands for speedy authorizations and limiting public participation, all in favor of their financial interests, over reasonable, responsible development does not relieve FERC of its legal duty to ensure gas projects are in the public interest. 

Read the coalition’s comments here: PIO Comments on Blanket Certificate NOPR.pdf 

The proposal will have serious impacts for the public including:  

• When power bills are already rising, authorizing yet more projects with less oversight could increase existing customers’ bills, wherein existing customers could pay for more projects built to serve someone else. Pipeline construction costs may be added to system-wide transportation rates, passed to gas utilities or power companies, and ultimately reflected in customer bills. Without stronger protections (not weaker ones), households and small businesses could subsidize infrastructure built for a new or specific customer from which they receive little or no benefit. 

• Automatic authorizations for certain projects costing up to $30 million. Pipeline companies could construct these projects under automatic authority, without a project-specific Commission order or an opportunity for the public to object before construction. 

• No dollar limit for some industrial projects, including the removal of any cost ceiling for certain expansions of compressor stations—the industrial facilities that pressurize gas to keep it moving through pipelines—and for new connections where gas enters a pipeline system. Many compressor stations release hazardous air pollutants harmful to human health, fine particles, and climate pollution. Under the proposal, even projects costing more than $86 million could use streamlined approval paths. 

• Pipeline companies could make their own calls on wildlife impacts. Rather than consulting federal wildlife experts, a pipeline company could rely on federal databases and certify for itself that a project would not affect endangered species or their critical habitat. 

• Only a short window for projects costing up to $86 million. For these projects, affected people would have a 60-day notice period to learn what is proposed, understand the impacts, organize, and file a formal objection if they want a potential, fuller federal review. 

“Most people have never heard of FERC’s blanket certificate program, but the consequences could show up in their communities and on their energy bills,” said Megan C. Gibson, Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This proposal could let pipeline companies spend tens of millions of dollars—with no cost ceiling for some projects while giving the public less notice and less opportunity to have any input or object. FERC’s job is to protect the public, not weaken oversight because industry demands it.” 

“FERC’s duty isn’t simply to process projects, but to ensure that the greenlit projects actually serve the public interest,” said Gillian Giannetti, Senior Attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council. “FERC is caving to the interests of the pipeline industry, who have a financial incentive to build more and more pipelines.” 

“FERC’s proposal creates a massive loophole, allowing major, costly infrastructure to bypass rigorous review required by law,” said Adam Kurland, Attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. “This isn’t ‘streamlining’—it’s an end-run around FERC’s statutory duty to protect ratepayers, landowners, and the environment.”