'People's Hearing' in DC on FERC's Issues

People’s Hearing’ Convened to Reform Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

From an Article by Mark Hand, DC Media Group, December 5, 2016

PHOTO: Panel of ‘judges’ hears testimony from residents opposed to FERC’s close relationship with the natural gas industry.

Described as the first-ever “People’s Hearing” challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), more than 60 speakers presented testimony on why they believe the agency systematically fails to listen to the concerns of the general public.

A panel of “judges,” fashioned similar to the monthly FERC open meetings, presided over the Dec. 2 hearing, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Unlike the real FERC meetings, speakers did not run the risk of getting escorted out by security guards for standing up and expressing dissent with the agency’s decisions.

Many speakers at the standing room-only event described FERC as a “rubber stamp” machine. They urged Congress to grant FERC more leeway to reject a company’s application if the agency determines the project would harm local communities and the environment. Relying on “the market” to decide whether a project should be approved is a flawed regulatory practice that should be replaced by a system that examines the actual need for the infrastructure and whether other options exist to meet the energy needs of the public, speakers said.

The roster of speakers served to illustrate the impressive scope of infrastructure build-out — from pipelines to compressor stations to liquefied natural gas export terminals — occurring in the eastern U.S. Speakers expressed frustration with how FERC appears to operate as an industry partner rather than an honest broker in natural gas infrastructure proceedings.

Russell Chisholm of the group Preserve Giles County contended that the voices of local residents were “stripped” from the public scoping meetings held for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a project proposed by EQT Midstream Partners LP and four corporate partners. According to Chisholm, FERC project manager Paul Friedman facilitated two public scoping meetings in southwestern Virginia: one in May 2015 and the other in November 2016.

“In both sessions, there was a common pattern in Friedman’s behavior of circumventing and converting so-called public hearings for the purpose of collecting citizens concerns and information into a systematic effort by Friedman to manipulate public opinion, dissuade opposition to the MVP and cloud any public record of that opposition,” said Chisholm, a U.S. Army veteran, who told the audience he planned to head to North Dakota after the public hearing to join other veterans in a show of solidarity with Native Americans opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline project.

Activists Seek to Fix ‘Corrupt’ Agency

The hearing’s organizers — Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Berks Gas Truth, Food & Water Watch, Clean Water Action, Beyond Extreme Energy, EarthWorks and Catskill Mountainkeeper — said they support a request signed by more than 180 organizations calling on Congress to reform the Natural Gas Act and investigate how FERC reviews natural gas infrastructure projects.

Throughout its nearly 40-year history, FERC has generally kept a low profile. With the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the start of the shale gas boom, though, FERC’s stature grew as residents started doing their homework on how natural gas projects were getting proposed and approved in their communities. For the past two years, activists have attended every monthly FERC meeting to protest the way the agency reviews natural gas infrastructure applications.

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, FERC became the lead agency for purposes of complying with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). With this newly assumed power, FERC has refused to heed the advice of experts at other federal agencies, said David Sligh, conservation director for Wild Virginia, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the state’s national forests. The group opposes the MVP and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a natural gas project proposed by Dominion Resources.

FERC often ignores or downplays the importance of concerns raised by the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said Sligh. Wild Virginia reviewed 18 cases across the U.S. in which various EPA regional offices commented on a FERC draft environmental impact statement (EIS). In every case, Sligh said, the EPA deemed the information in the draft EIS to be “insufficient,” whether it was a flawed analyses of route alternatives and cumulative impacts, a failure to address long-term damages to waterbodies and mature forests, or a refusal to follow NEPA regulations in regard to needs analyses, greenhouse gases and environmental justice.

“FERC must not have the option of ignoring the opinions and judgments of environmental agencies that have greater expertise and credibility. Congress must see to it,” Sligh said.

Megan Holleran, who has been fighting construction of Constitution Pipeline Co. LLC’s natural gas pipeline on her family’s property in Susquehanna County, Pa., said the people’s hearing successfully provided attendees with a look at the many areas of FERC’s regulatory review process that need to be fixed.

“Even the people who are trying to work within the system are finding that it is broken. There is a sense from people outside of the activism community that we ignore the official process and then just stand out there and tie ourselves to a tree,” Holleran said in an interview. “The people’s hearing is a really good way to send out the message that everyone does try to follow the official process. The reason we end up tied to a tree is because the official process is corrupt.”

Belinda Blazic, a New Jersey resident fighting Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line’s proposed Garden State Expansion Project, questioned why FERC lets pipeline companies build their projects in segments, a common complaint heard at the hearing. Pipeline segmentation, according to Blazic, makes it easier for companies to overcome regulatory requirements at both the federal and state levels. “The impacts of these projects in our communities raise serious questions of FERC’s review process. Congressional investigation and legislative remedy are needed,” she said. “The ‘R’ in FERC stands for ‘Regulatory’ not ‘rubber stamp.’”

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Some 66 Testify at People’s Hearing as to FERC Abuses

News Report by April Pierson-Keating, Buckhannon, Uphsur County, WV

Washington, D.C.– Last Friday, people from 11 states and the District of Columbia traveled to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to state their case at a People’s Hearing sponsored by DelawareRiverkeeper Network (DRN), a conservation organization established in 1998 to protect the Delaware River watershed which feeds water to four states.

Speakers came from as far away as Florida and New Hampshire to tell their stories to a panel of judges of how they and the approval process for pipelines and gas infrastructure have been tainted and abused by the only regulatory agency that approves interstate pipelines, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Many have claimed a conflict of interest, since this agency is funded by the fees it collects from companies whose projects it approves. The FERC has only turned down one project in over 30 years.

Those testifying included an economist, a nuclear expert, a medical anthropologist, and a reporter with over 40 years’ experience, two attorneys, an ex-marine, a grandmother, and several individuals who have been personally affected by irresponsible gas infrastructure build out practices. Projects represented included the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines, the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion Project (PA to MA), West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline (MA), the NEXUS (OH, MI), PennEast (PA, NJ) and the SABAL (FL) pipelines, DTI’s Cove Point LNG Export Facility, and one organization called Fair Compensation for Underground Storage.

“Every day there is a new example of how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is abusing its power and the law in its biased reviews of fracked gas pipelines and its disregard of the rights of people, states and regulatory agencies,” the DRN website states. Examples include “aggressive use of the power of eminent domain, creating loopholes that put people in legal limbo, unable to challenge pipelines in court before FERC sends them in to construction, and never forcing compliance with community protection laws as projects proceed through construction.”

Testifiers told stories of homes and farms in danger of pipelines running too close for safety, insufficient information being provided in the Draft Environmental Impact Statements, safety measures being skirted or ignored, lost property values, daily stress and lowered quality of life, bullying by landmen, unsafe practices during construction causing property damage and injuries, and police colluding with companies to harass protestors and the general public.

One person described his trepidation at the laying of a gas pipeline over a seismic fault. Another described plans to lay a pipeline near a rock quarry with regular blasting. The Algonquin pipeline, which runs only 105 feet from an aging nuclear facility at Indian Point, NY, has been given approval by the FERC. An explosion near this plant would cause human casualties comparable to what occurred at Hiroshima in 1945.

Speakers also called attention to the revolving door between the gas industry and FERC, the nepotism of FERC commissioners’ spouses working in the gas industry while projects by the same company gain approval. Four of the speakers hailed from West Virginia and are members of the POWHR Coalition.

All of the stories will be compiled and submitted to Congress for the record in a lawsuit filed by DRN March 2, 2016 against the FERC with the United States District Court in Washington, D.C. The suit holds that FERC’s review and approval process for jurisdictional pipeline projects is infected by structural bias, violating due process rights in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. DRN seeks changes to FERC’s funding structure, as well as other fundamental changes to the agency, to make it accountable and consistent with democratic governance.

Several comments were made in support of the water protectors at Standing Rock to hearty applause, and at least one at the hearing, Russell Chisolm, a member of the POWHR Coalition, was on his way to the camp with over 2,000 other veterans. Chisolm is among those ready to again put themselves in harm’s way to form a human shield to protect others as they stand for the rights of all people and future generations to have clean water.

We often feel powerless, especially here in “Gasland,” but there was such an outpouring of resolve, hard work, determination, and love in that room, that it gave us all hope and strength to continue the fight. Mni Wiconi! Water is life!

>>> April Pierson-Keating, Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance, Clean Water Through Clean Energy, www.mountainlakespreservation.org

Fareed Zakaria interviews Tom Steyer

From an Article by Richard Valdmanis, Huffington Post, November 16, 2016

Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who has spent more than $140 million on fighting climate change, said on Tuesday he will spend whatever it takes to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s pro-drilling and anti-regulation agenda.

The former hedge fund manager from California is putting together a strategy that will “engage voters and citizens to fight back” once Trump takes the White House in January, he told Reuters in an interview. However, he stressed he was not planning to fight Trump through the courts.

Instead, he would focus on “trying to present an opposite point of view and trying to get that point of view expressed, and communicated to citizens.”

Steyer’s pledge to fight Trump suggests an intensifying battle for U.S. public opinion on global climate change, an issue that has already divided many Americans, lawmakers, and companies between those who consider it a major global threat and those who doubt its existence.

Other U.S. environmental groups are also preparing to resist Trump’s agenda, with some vowing street protests and more established organizations that helped draft some of President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations preparing to defend them in court.

“We have always been willing to do whatever is necessary,” Steyer said, when asked how much money he was willing to spend to oppose Trump’s agenda.

Trump campaigned on a promise to drastically reduce environmental regulation and ease permitting for infrastructure, moves he said would breathe life into an oil and gas industry ailing from low prices, without harming U.S. air and water quality.

He has also called climate change a hoax and has promised to “cancel” the Paris Climate Accord between nearly 200 nations to slow global warming, a deal he said would cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and put it at a disadvantage.

While the approach has cheered the industry, it has sent shockwaves through the environmental movement, which is confronting the prospect of losing all progress it made during the Obama administration.

Steyer, who had endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, called Trump’s policies dangerous.

“Every single one of these things, whether it was getting rid of Paris or cutting back the EPA, we think are extremely dangerous to the security of every American,” Steyer said. “We think it is based on willful ignorance of the facts and flies in the face of the realities facing the world.”

Arctic Drilling is also very controversial

Steyer’s main political vehicle, NextGen Climate, has called on the Obama administration to defy Trump’s pro-drilling agenda by issuing an order permanently blocking all new drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

Trump has also promised to ask Canadian oil pipeline company, TransCanada Corp, to resubmit its application to build a pipeline into the United States that would link Alberta’s vast oil sands to American refineries and ports on the Gulf Coast. The project, Keystone XL, had been rejected by the Obama administration after years of mass protests and lobbying by environmental organizations.

Steyer said the project may no longer make sense since a slump in oil prices has reduced the profitability of oil sands production.

Steyer, who four years ago left the hedge fund firm he co-founded to devote himself full-time to environmental activism, said young voter turnout in areas where NextGen focused its mobilization efforts during the 2016 campaign was up more than 20 percent from the last presidential election in 2012.

“Did we get the president we want, absolutely not. Did we get a majority of clean energy supporters in the senate, no,” Steyer said. “But in terms of what we did, and the strategy we took, we wouldn’t do anything differently.”

NextGen poured nearly $69 million into its elections related programs during the presidential campaign, according to federal records compiled by OpenSecrets.org, slightly lower than the $74 million it spent during the mid-term congressional elections in 2014, when only two of the six candidates it supported won.

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Tom Steyer: Clean energy actually creates more jobs

<< Taxes/fees/controls on fracking are justified >>

Goodies for the oil and gas industry may be the dumbest idea yet

An Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

An article entitled “Oil plunge sparks calls for Congress to act,” published in The Hill on January 10 is making the rounds now. The Hill bills itself “a top US political website, read by the White House and more lawmakers than any other site — vital for policy, politics and election campaigns.” It is considerably overbalanced to the right, and the piece under consideration is found under “opinion.”

The first line give the thesis of the article: As the price of oil plunges to its lowest point in 12 years — and threatens to drag the broader U.S. economy down with it — lawmakers say Congress should consider helping teetering energy companies with policy fixes beyond the decision to lift the oil-export ban.

The kind of fixes suggested include: (1) expediting the process for exporting liquefied natural gas; (2) easing environmental and other regulations; (3) taking retaliatory trade measures against Saudi Arabia; (4) pushing legislation to allow companies to gather natural gas from oil wells on federal land; and (5) help our industry compete by having infrastructure. That means the right mix of pipelines, transmission lines, rail, roads, i. e., have the government build it for them.

Facts listed in the article are essentially correct, it is the unsaid facts that are not taken into account that destroy the argument. There are several facts of overwhelming importance. First is that the U. S.  is a huge importer of oil. For the month of October, 2015, our total imports were 273,000,000 barrels. What does export mean when we are importing that much oil?

How can you export fracked oil when fracking entails using so much energy, equipment, materials and chemicals.  Facking costs an extra $20 to $40 per barrel, compared to conventional recovery. Deep sea drilling is similar, as is arctic drilling, which hasn’t even been proved feasible. How does this extra cost stack up against the $20 a barrel total extraction cost for Saudi Arabia, mentioned in the article?

“Oil plunge sparks calls for Congress to act” hypothesizes that the Saudi kingdom is keeping up production (world price was below $32 when this was written) in a bid to expand market share and undercut competitors. That’s a strange complaint from a “conservative.” Aren’t the markets supposed to do that sort of thing? If you read around, others have said they want to attack Iran, infringe on Russia (the second leading exporter of natural gas), and the U. S. fracking industry, which is doubtless the least likely target, with its high extraction costs. It already has the $20 – 40 disadvantage.

Now the claim about Russia being in second place. Russia exported 10.5% of the total exported (in 2014), while Saudi Arabia exported 18.5%. Incidentally Canada, in fourth place, exported 6.1%  mostly to the U. S. This author thinks Saudi Arabia may have been telling the truth that they were keeping up production because they didn’t want their oil to be “stranded,” left in the ground when hydrocarbons are no longer the main source of energy. The progress of solar and wind power will not be discussed here.

What so many people seem unwilling to realize is that the U. S. covers only about 4 percent of the dry land on Earth. We supplied the rest of the world for decades, being first to develop the technology to remove oil. Now we are getting to the last dregs, and using so much ourselves we really are not is a position to export from the point of view of the public interest. We have relatively more natural gas, but do not stack up well in comparisons with other nations. Russia has five and a half times as much, Iran has nearly four times as much as the U. S. (Yes, we have more gas than Saudi Arabia, 6% more. See the CIA World Fact Book, which is on line.)

The truth is that fracking’s extra costs are small compared to its vast externalized costs. This includes multiple factors, such as depreciated value of property where fracking takes place, obvious from the beginning, but just now beginning to be documented. More than one of these studies now exist, with comparable conclusions. Losses to other industries such as farming, recreation, forestry, the retirement industry, are ignored. Health effects on the surrounding population is another cost just now being studied and recognized. Long time environmental costs, effects on water quality, loss of aquifers, and the formation of mini-brownfields where the soil is poisoned and treated as if they did not exist.

Then there is the two billion dollar debt mountain that belongs to the industry. As of January 7, 2016, there have been 38 bankruptcies in the exploration and production (E&P) section of the industry, amounting to $18 billion. These have been Chapter 11 bankruptcies (restructuring). These wipe out shareholders, but keep key executives in place to seek funds and go ahead. The last resort are Chapter 7 bankruptcies, which are still to come, which eliminate management so the company is wiped out and gives the remaining value to shareholders. The other 21 E&P companies risk this fate.

The industry has been losing money for those who speculate in stored oil. They bought high and have been forced to sell low.  And it’s not likely to get better for a while.

All Congress can do is increase these externalized costs. There is no way they can reduce the monetary cost of the fracking process. (It would be against conservative principles to provide government funding for the cost of infrastructure to promote these industries: pipelines, railroads, roads, storage tanks, etc. Those are costs of doing business.)

Businessmen and legislators should accept the fact that fracking is an expensive, dirty, dangerous way to get oil and gas. No amount of propaganda will change that.