Court rejects Sierra Club’s challenges on Freeport, Sabine Pass LNG facilities

The DC Circuit court dismissed challenges by Sierra Club regarding FERC’s environmental assessment of Freeport and Sabine Pass LNG export projects.

The court ruled that such objections should be brought up during the Department of Energy’s process of authorizing exports of natural gas, rather than the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s process of permitting the LNG facility.

In its ruling on the Freeport LNG plant, the court said that the DoE, not FERC had the authority to licence the export of natural gas going through the Freeport LNG facilities.

Additionally, the court said, there was no evidence suggesting that the gas to be processed in the Freeport facility, independent of the export authorization, would come from future, induced natural gas production, as opposed to from existing production, particularly in light of the longtime, extensive natural gas development that has already occurred in Texas, including in its shale areas.

In regards to the Sabine Pass liquefaction plant, the court noted that the Commission adequately explained why it was not reasonably foreseeable that greater production capacity at the terminal, separate and apart from any export activity, would induce additional domestic natural gas production.

In his support of the court’s decision, Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas added that the existing environmental process “adequately assesses the impacts of LNG exports”.

He noted that court also found that attempts to draw the bounds of environmental analysis for purposes of citing and constructing an LNG facility outside the local impacts of a given facility “are not valid”.

LNG World News Staff