By Ron Sadler

The editorial, “LNG does an about-face”, published in the July 21, 2011 edition of the Register-Guard was right on the money, especially the last sentence: “All parties involved….will have to bring their thinking up to date”. Driving the need for revised thinking is the fact that the need for LNG import terminals has been eliminated while the attractiveness for LNG export terminals has become compelling.

At the Federal level, the agency most in need of revising its thought process is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The first thing FERC must do is put to rest once and for all its pending approval for the Jordan Cove LNG import terminal planned for Coos Bay. Not only is the approval for this facility currently under appeal by the State of Oregon and a number of non-governmental organizations, but there is no longer a need for this import facility as documented by FERC itself.

FERC clearly states, on page 3-17 of the Final EIS for Jordan Cove, that the Ruby pipeline project “could satisfy most of the main objectives” of the Jordan Cove project. As we all know, construction of the Ruby pipeline is nearing completion, and it will become operational in the near future. Clearly, the idea of a Jordan Cove import terminal is a dead issue, and it is high time FERC cleared the decks and began the task of “bringing their thinking up to date”.

As to the process of FERC getting up to speed, there is good news and bad news. Let’s look at the good news first.

Existing Federal law and regulations concisely spell out and describe a rational and objective analytical process leading to a clearly documented and transparent decision that balances social, economic, and environmental considerations. In order to be consistent with the intent of these laws and regulations, FERC would have to proceed as follows.

Since LNG export terminals represent a new type of energy technology to be applied for the first time to the western United States, existing regulations state that the preparation of an area-wide or overview EIS is appropriate. This type of document is commonly called a Programmatic EIS. Its purpose would be to serve as a valuable and necessary analysis at the macro level of the affected environment and the potential cumulative impacts of the reasonably foreseeable actions under the new program within the regional geographic area. In addition, a Programmatic EIS would also discuss the need for an export strategy, as well as the role of such a program within the overall energy framework for the entire country.

Assuming the Record of Decision based on the programmatic found the LNG export option to be viable and worthy of further consideration, project-specific EISs could then be prepared for individual projects such as Jordan Cove. The Jordan Cove EIS would be tiered to the Programmatic. A Jordan Cove EIS prepared in this manner would have greater utility and meaning to the general public in that it could concentrate on the site-specific aspects without the need to duplicate discussions of broad-scale issues and impacts which would be available in the Programmatic.

This concentration on site-specificity would be extremely important. For example, if a LNG export terminal was scheduled to be constructed at Jordan Cove, the commercial production of coal-bed methane would become a reasonably foreseeable action triggered by the near-by access to the export facility. If this were to occur, there are estimates that up to about 1,000 wells might be drilled within the Coos and Coquille basins in close proximity to numerous salmon and steelhead spawning and rearing streams.

In any case, based on the comprehensive and coordinated analysis described in the programmatic and site-specific EISs, a final decision as to whether the Jordan Cove LNG terminal was a go or a no-go would be objective and transparent. In addition, it would be immune to legal challenge based on failure to follow procedures under NEPA.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the probability that FERC will fully comply with the letter and intent of the NEPA regulations is essentially zero. We will not see a programmatic EIS. We will probably see a revised EIS for Jordan Cove, but, instead of being documentation of an objective analysis leading to a rational blend of social, economic, and environmental considerations, it will be a blatant attempt to justify, yet again, a pre-conceived decision. This would be a direct violation of NEPA which would lead to prolonged litigation.

Why would a Federal agency knowingly violate or attempt to circumvent the letter and intent of Federal law and regulations?

To get an answer to this question, I suggest you query one of the 536 political appointees occupying the top positions within the Department of Energy, or perhaps one of the 52 political appointees within FERC.