Delaware Riverkeeper Files Suit to Prevent Damages from LNG Terminal(s)

by Diana Gooding on May 2, 2020

Natural gas so cold it becomes liquid under pressure, proposed for export in Delaware River & Delaware Bay

Lawsuit filed against Delaware River LNG project » Kallanish Energy News

From the Kallanish Energy News, April 29, 2020

An environmental group has filed a lawsuit in federal court against a proposed pier in the Delaware River in New Jersey for liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers. The suit was filed last week in U.S. District Court in New Jersey by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

The suit charges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should not have approved the $96 million project that includes a 1,600-foot pier and a storage facility in New Jersey’s Gloucester County. The permit had been issued last February 28.

The project at Gibbstown, New Jersey, is being advanced by Delaware River Partners, a subsidiary of New Fortress Energy LLC. Those tankers would load LNG that had been moved about 200 miles by truck and rail from the Marcellus Shale in northeast Pennsylvania under the plan by New Fortress Energy.

The company has gotten a special federal rail permit to be allowed to move LNG by rail in specially designed rail cars.

Construction started last fall at a New Fortress liquefaction plant in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. It is expected to be operational in late 2020 or early 2021.

New Fortress has plans for a second facility in Pennsylvania. It would be operational in first quarter 2021. Each plant would produce 3.6 million gallons of LNG per day or 2.15 million tons of LNG per year.

In related news, the Delaware River Basin Commission has set a May 11 hearing for an adjudicatory hearing on the project. Hearing officer John Kelly will hear evidence and then decide whether to recommend that the commission uphold or reject its approval of the project last June.

The commission, a governmental body, can accept or reject his recommendation. Critics have argued that the commission did not allow enough time for public comment in approving the project that would allow two tankers to dock at Gibbstown on the Delaware River.

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See also: Critics of LNG Plan Say Army Corps Failed to Assess Impacts Before Issuing Permit | NJ Spotlight, John Hurtle, April 27, 2020

The environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN) filed a complaint in federal court in New Jersey last week, claiming that the Corps, one of several regulators that must sign off on the project, had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by not doing an environmental impact study (EIS) on the project on the Delaware River at Gibbstown in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

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