Federal energy regulators are making it easier to develop liquefied natural gas infrastructure across the country, proposing a blanket authorization program and removing certain environmental requirements for new projects.
On Thursday morning, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission put forward the new policies, which will help deliver on President Donald Trump’s agenda to develop more natural gas projects and increase exports of LNG abroad.
“It is indisputable that gas is critical to our future,” FERC Chairwoman Laura Swett said.
She said that while the United States has an incredible supply of natural gas, the “only current restriction” on harnessing enough for domestic and international demand is the ability to get gas to market and past infrastructure bottlenecks.
“Today, we are taking monumental steps to eliminate those restrictions,” Swett said.
The regulators unanimously proposed establishing a blanket program to authorize certain activities at LNG facilities. This will allow some projects to move forward at an accelerated pace without undergoing a case-by-case authorization process that can take months or even years.
FERC is breaking up this blanket program into three tiers, meaning not all projects will be eligible to move forward without any federal review.
The first tier is “automatic authorization,” allowing projects to proceed without advanced notice to the commission.
There is a narrow definition of what projects are eligible for this tier, as they must not increase an LNG plant’s authorization capacity, cannot expand authorized vertical or horizontal extension within the facility’s footprint, and cannot exceed design limits for flows, volumes, pressures, temperatures, and more.
This essentially means any expansion of an LNG plant is not automatically authorized.
This second tier requires developers to provide a 60-day notice to the commission and provide an opportunity for the agency and stakeholders to protest against the action.
Projects eligible for this tier are similar to those in the first; however, it also encompasses some projects that may increase the capacity of an LNG facility. Those activities must also be located within the LNG plant footprint, must not cause a significant adverse impact to reliability, risks, or public safety, and cannot cause any changes outside design limits of new and existing equipment.
The third and final tier requires developers to provide a 90-day notice to the commission before moving forward and provide a protest period for staff and stakeholders.
Projects that fall under this tier specifically involve the construction of new LNG infrastructure, including liquefaction trains, tanks, and marine berths. As these activities may extend outside of an existing plant footprint, the projects are not permitted to permanently occupy more than 25 acres of previously disturbed or developed land. They must also be designed using the same in-kind or upgraded LNG facilities and systems previously evaluated and authorized.
A public comment period on the proposed blanket authorization program will last 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register.
FERC is also aiming to speed up the development of LNG projects by reducing federal permitting requirements.
Specifically, the agency is softening environmental reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The regulators proposed to no longer request air dispersion modeling from applicants or rely on the modeling when assessing operating air quality effects under NEPA.
“This is not a shortcut where we are trying to protect the environment less or the communities less,” Swett told reporters. “This is simply a statement that we are, in my words, an economic regulator, not an environmental regulatory, and we certainly are not an air expert, whereas other agencies on the federal level and the state level are.”
The commission did not unanimously agree to the proposal, with Democratic commissioner Judy Chang dissenting.
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Chang said she is concerned that softening the requirements will leave FERC “without adequate information to meet its obligations under NEPA and the Natural Gas Act,” saying the air dispersion modeling is the “best tool” the agency has for understanding local and regional air impacts of projects.
The public will have until Nov. 16 to submit comments on the proposal.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
