July 16 – What a day! We delivered more than 11,500 of your comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opposing the new Blanket certificates rule and made sure they’d remember us by writing our message on, what else – Blankets! It was a hot, muggy morning in DC filled with wildfire smoke, but we didn’t let that deter us.
Friends from Beyond Extreme Energy blocked the driveway to the FERC garage with a cheerful picnic blanket and a message that “the climate crisis is no picnic.” They disbanded after police threatened to arrest everyone (including the picnic). We met with staff from the Office of Public Participation to confirm that, yes, they are getting all of your emails. And after a brief disagreement over whether we were obstructing an emergency exit, we got FERC security to agree to take our blankets —one for each commissioner — as a token of our collective resolve. Check it all out on our social media posts on Facebook and Bluesky (an edited video is coming soon for Instagram and Youtube). And we’re still not done!
Click here to join us tonight for a one night only screening of the Cancer Alley Vs Goliath documentary projected live onto the side of the FERC building. We’ll post on social media to show you what it looks like, but if you want to watch the movie with us from the comfort of your own home, you’ll need to get one of these limited edition $10 tickets! We’ll also tease the August 4 release of the Appalachia Vs Goliath episode, which features many of our FERC fighting friends and chronicles the struggle against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Click here to RSVP for a free ticket to watch with us in August.
Later in the day we also met with staff for a key US Senator – Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. The timing is important because next week FERC has to appear before Heinrich and the rest of the Senate energy committee for an oversight hearing. Our action today should encourage some tough questions about the Blanket Certificate process, the supposed “independence” of this rubber stamp agency, and more.
Join us tonight, share the message on social media, and stay tuned for more soon! You can also chip in here to support our organizing at FERC.
July 9 – Just a quick update to let you know that the comment period on this FERC rule was longer than we thought and so we’re still collecting comments, and will deliver them at next week’s July 16 FERC commissioners meeting.
In addition, since we first wrote you about this issue in June, the Supreme Court just gave Trump king-like powers to dismiss supposedly independent regulators like FERC if they oppose his agenda of fossil fuel “energy dominance.” That creates a dangerous dynamic where FERC is re-writing the rules for big LNG and data center projects, with more overt political pressure from the Trump regime for them to side with fossil fuels and big business.
If you haven’t had a chance to do so, click here to send a comment now. Or, if you’ve already filed, use the links below to share on social media and chip in here to support our action at FERC next week.
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Our old frenemies at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) have proposed a new rule for blanket certificates, and as usual it’s a rubber stamp for frackers to run roughshod over our climate and communities.
FERC says “The blanket certificate program provides an administratively efficient means to … offer a limited set of services, provided each activity complies with constraints on costs and environmental impacts …”. In other words, they’re supposed to be used for limited, small changes to existing projects, without having to go through the whole process of re-applying for a permit. But we call bullshit.
What FERC is actually doing is giving frackers the green light to run roughshod over our climate and communities by supersizing existing, and in some cases derelict, gas infrastructure like pipelines, compressor stations and, now for the first time, LNG export facilities. They’re letting bigger and bigger projects qualify for blanket certificates while asking less and less of the frackers in terms of environmental review, climate protection, and community notice.
Click here to send your own message calling bullshit with us and our friends at BXE. We’ll give you tools to send a quick comment to the office of public participation, as well as instructions on how to formally efile your own comment. We’ll bundle all the messages together and submit them to the correct dockets to make sure FERC gets the message, and we’ll be outside the Commissioners’ meeting on June 18 to make our protest visible.
Two projects prove why FERC’s expanded blanket certificate program is bullshit.
Argent LNG
Argent LNG is a Liquefied Natural Gas export project, and would be the 2nd largest project in Louisiana if built. It’s also BP’s first deepwater drilling project since the deepwater horizon spill more than 20 years ago. The LNG facility would be built in the fragile hurricane- and flood-prone Gulf Coast wetlands south of New Orleans. And the gas would come from an existing network of deepwater drilling rigs in Gulf. But this is the most dangerous, “ultra deep water” drilling with a huge impact on local wildlife and ecosystems.
Argent’s owners and investors are trying to rush approval of the project with a blanket certificate from FERC so they can eventually export more than 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas per year by 2030. Every bit of it to be sold on the international market where it will drive climate change, pollute the air, and drive up energy costs for US customers. Normally, a project this big, this risky, and with this many potential impacts wouldn’t qualify for a blanket certificate, but FERC conveniently changed the rules in May to allow much bigger projects to qualify and specifically said LNG facilities (which are usually too big and too new) could qualify as well. Argent LNG’s blanket certificate review comments are due July 6, and comments on the FERC proposed rule changes on blanket certificates are due July 27. Click here to submit your comment now and we’ll make sure it’s included in both dockets.
Green Chile pipeline/Project Jupiter
Energy Transfer (of Dakota Access Pipeline infamy) is asking for a blanket certificate to build 18 miles of 24-inch diameter natural gas pipeline, which it calls Green Chile. The pipeline itself is a problem, but the bigger issue is that Green Chile would only have one customer: the massive Data center called Project Jupiter. Green Chile pipeline is to supply the gas so that Project Jupiter can power itself with its very own fleet of natural gas power plants.
But Project Jupiter is too big to be covered by any blanket certificate. The campus alone is bigger than New York’s Central Park, more than 1,400 acres. And those power-hungry data centers could need as much as two-and-a-half gigawatts of electricity, more than the local electric grid can possibly supply and more than half of what flesh and blood New Mexicans consume now. There are also concerns about the impacts on local wildlife, agriculture, and water use in this drought-stricken part of the desert. Green Chile pipeline is not currently accepting comments at FERC, though you can send an e-comment anytime telling them you oppose the project. But while we wait for new on Project Jupiter and the pipeline, you can send a comment to FERC opposing the blanket certificate changes, and those are due July 27.