Yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced that CP2 LNG is on the agenda for its June meeting, in the midst of robust and ongoing frontline and national opposition to the gas export project. Evidence shows that expanded gas exports would be harmful to local communities, significantly contribute to dangerous climate change, and raise domestic energy prices nationwide.
The Senate voted to confirm three nominees to serve terms as commissioners at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Judy W. Chang was confirmed today, and David Rosner and Lindsay S. See were confirmed yesterday.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club sued the federal government today for failing to properly evaluate harms from the Alaska LNG project to several threatened and endangered species.
Today, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) reintroduced the End Polluter Welfare Act, the most comprehensive legislative proposal to address the billions in special interest subsidies that disproportionately flow to the oil, gas, and coal industries. The reintroduction comes with the support of over 300 environmental, climate, consumer protection, and frontline organizations who have signed an organizational letter backing the legislation.
Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission finalized its transmission planning and allocation requirements to unleash clean energy, improve the resilience of the power grid, and improve affordability. These new standards will require utilities to create smart long-term plans that consider all of the benefits that new transmission can provide for customers, like lower energy bills and increased reliability.
Gulf Coast community groups and environmental advocates are urging the Biden Administration to reevaluate the criteria used to determine whether massively expanding U.S. crude oil exports that lock in decades of fossil fuel dependence and harm Gulf Coast communities is in the “national interest.”
Today, more than 70 members of Congress sent a letter to President Biden and Secretary Granholm thanking them for pausing the approval of applications for new liquefied methane gas (LNG) exports while the Department of Energy considers the criteria used to determine whether new exports are in the public interest. Gulf Coast advocates and environmental groups issued statements in support of the letter from members of Congress.
The Federal Trade Commission has uncovered efforts by former CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources Scott Sheffield to collude with OPEC in order to increase the price of oil through agreed up cuts in production. The conduct was discovered as part of an investigation into the $64 billion acquisition of Pioneer by Exxon Mobil, which FTC says it will not reject as long as Sheffield is not named to the board.
House Republicans are threatening to withhold funding for the collapsed Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore unless President Biden reverses the pause on approvals for new methane gas exports, or LNG. In a visit to Maryland on Friday, the President reiterated his commitment to reopen the Baltimore port and provide federal funding. The funding would be allocated to the reconstruction of the bridge, which could take from 18 months to several years.
Today, 110 organizations sent a letter to Secretary Granholm and President Biden to thank them for the pause on approvals for new LNG export licenses and urge them to not only update the previous economic and environmental analyses that the Department of Energy (DOE) relies on for considering LNG export applications, but also to incorporate factors not currently analyzed like environmental justice.
Today marks one year since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hosted an environmental justice and equity roundtable intended to explore ways FERC Commissioners could better uphold these important values in their decisions. To date, FERC has not taken further action.
Yesterday, sixteen attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the recently announced pause on approvals of new gas exports, known as LNG. The temporary pause is in place to give the Department of Energy time to update the outdated studies it uses to determine the environmental and economic impacts of increasing LNG exports, something the agency is required to do under the Natural Gas Act.