For all those who’ll be attending, I’ll be going to the evening session. I certainly can’t make it to Frenchtown for a lunch session and I doubt many others would be either. I’ll be there early and will have materials to hand out. I’ll be the tall chubby fellow with a John Deere hat on 🙂

See you all there!

So PennEast is going to host yet another set of landowner-only gatherings so they can hawk their pipeline on an unsuspecting crowd without the bother of activists getting in the way with their annoying snippets of truth.

Unfortunately for PennEast, I happen to be one of those landowners. I plan on having business cards made up with all of the local anti-PennEast websites on them, plus will be carrying material for people to read directly onsite. For starters some of the analysis articles from this site will be available.

If you have any material you’d like given to all these people please contact me at thecostofthepipeline@gmail.com. I’ve got a 1/2 ton pickup with a full 8′ bed so I can carry all the material you can give me!

I’m not sure which session I’ll attend, I have a feeling the 11:30-1:30 one will be lightly attended. Should I go for both and risk PennEast barring me from the second one? Or just the evening session?

Sometimes dealing with PennEast and the FERC, and worrying about pipeline routes, and looking at environmental impacts, and researching energy markets, and looking for supporting evidence of various theories, and educating yourself on engineering practices, geological formations, etc etc all becomes a bit overwhelming and you start questioning your sanity. It’s all to easy to just hold your head in your hands and say “Oh lord, why is all this happening?! Why me? This is crazy….”. And I know it’s not just me, everyone I’ve talked to about pipeline issues have had the same feeling to one degree or another.

One thing that helps is to realize that we’re not alone. And I don’t just mean here in NJ and Eastern PA. I mean across the country. It’s not just PennEast that’s messing with our environment and our towns. It’s multiple pipelines around the country that people are fighting, and individuals and organizations all over the country are each learning about (and being sickened by) the FERC and its processes.

Along these lines, one day when I was doing searches in the FERC eLibrary site I decided to do something a little different. Rather than search on our docket, PF15-1-000, I decided to search….all natural gas dockets. I figured I’d see what other people were saying in their own pipeline wars.

A submission on the first page caught my eye immediately. It was entitled “Fix FERC First – Part 6”. It was a treatise on all of the things that were wrong with the FERC. I was intrigued and in the end I ended up reading all 6 parts of the series and contacted the author, Nick Miller. His full document has now grown to 7 parts plus a forward and table of contents and is available below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B512ERL8q-oIdHJ1a21SekFSNWs/view?usp=sharing

Nick lives in Groton, MA, and has a story much like mine. He learned a natural gas pipeline was going to go through is town (Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas pipeline) and started researching it. Over time he learned all about pipelines, and the FERC, and how pipeline proposals sail through the approval process with ease. As he researched more he became increasingly horrified at the broken FERC processes and how the pipeline companies ruthlessly take advantage of it to more or less do whatever they want.

Reading his treatise was a chilling exercise for me because his points are eerily familiar. Replace the words “Kinder Morgan” with “PennEast” and the document would still ring true. It’s amazing how all of the pipeline companies are using the same playbook and the same exact tactics to ram their proposals through the process and dupe the public into believing their for the common good.

Part 1 of his document outlines Nicks’ overall thesis. I’d distill it down to these points:

– FERC is fundamentally broken.
– FERC considers pipeline projects in isolation even when they were clustered close together geographically and in terms of timing.
– FERC lets the market determine direction instead of government dictating policy decisions.
– FERC allows pipeline companies to resort to vague handwaving and slight-of-hand, and will not force them to give the public hard facts.

As we fight the PennEast pipeline, does any of this ring a bell?

Part 2 deals with the FERC’s faulty definition of “need”. He discusses in detail how eminent domain – a gravely serious business – is being ascertained strictly by determining if a company can make money from a proposal. If the answer is “yes” then FERC considers the project justified and gives it the green light. Nick shows how the public is kept out of this process entirely and how manifestly unfair it is to residents and organizations that are affected by this process.

Part 3 goes into more detail about how the FERC colludes with the industry to mislead the general public on infrastructure projects. He lists how Kinder Morgan has engaged in a litany of misleading information and deliberate obfuscation of the truth – and how FERC has stood by and let it happen. Some examples include:

– Made presentations at town meetings where it agreed to provide answers to the written
questions submitted by the town selectmen – and then simply never even attempted to provide
those answers, despite repeated requests for them to do so.

– Filed laughably poor maps from outdated sources

– Represented a 6,000HP compressor station as more or less the same as a 90,000HP one.

– Changed routes and maps without informing affected stakeholders.

– Refused to add additional scoping meetings during extreme snow conditions

– Lied about use of existing right-of-ways, where in fact they will be widening an existing right of way considerably.

– Refused to disclose final location of compressor stations

– Answers legitimate questions with misdirections to irrelevant topics

Anyone involved in the PennEast fight will find these behaviors extremely familiar.

Part 4 of this magnificent document studies in depth just how short sighted FERC is. It goes into detail about the perils of fracking, and fossil fuels in general. He talks about FERC approving every pipeline project in site with no thought to what those pipelines in the ground will mean 30-40 years from now when they go quiescent. It talks about FERC short-changing the long term for short term corporate profits.

Part 5 is entitled “The “R” Is For Regulatory Not Rubberstamp” and is pretty self-explanatory. As we’ve seen in our fight against PennEast FERC mostly just goes through the motions without any real passion or engagement. They are clearly phoning it all in and have no intention of actually doing their jobs and truly regulating the industry’s growth.

Part 6 is a great little diversion where Nick gives quotes from other prominent people who are critical of the FERC. He includes quotes from Robert F Kennedy Jr, Elizabeth Warren and Jim McGovern. I really like the quote from Warren: “I am very concerned about a regulatory agency that is only able to say ‘yes, yes, yes.’ That’s not the job of a regulatory agency.”

Part 7 wraps it up and ties all the pieces together.

I’m glad there are people around the country like Nick who are willing to not only stand up and fight against the pipeline companies and FERC, but who take an enormous amount of time and effort to really research the issues in-depth and make a stand that is amazing for both its depth and breadth. As I said in the opening of this post, take heart people. We’re not alone in this. People around the country are waking up and see the farce that the FERC has become, and they’re determined to do something about. So keep it up and let’s do our part and contribute that noble goal of reforming the FERC and the energy policy in this country along the way.

Even though the scoping period has closed the FERC has indicated that they will continue to accept scoping comments and have PennEast respond to them.  So please keep them coming!  Take some time out now and write a comment if you haven’t already.  FERC will close that window soon and you’ll have missed your chance.

For my part I’ve gotten a flurry of new submissions in today. As always I’ll include links to the main FERC site as well as their backup site. Because, well, their website is terrible but at least usually one or the other side is up.

I finally was able to successfully upload my article documenting PennEast’s deceitful arguments about this pipeline serving Eastern PA and NJ so that they can invoke eminent domain. It just ain’t so, and I prove why this is using industry press releases and regulatory filings.

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13827935
https://elibrary-backup.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13827935

Next up, we have an earlier blog post that shows the connection between the Downeast LNG export terminal and PennEast. The two are hooked up via the Algonquin pipeline interconnect in Lambertville, NJ. That interconnect is one of the explicit justifications for PennEast. Except that interconnect doesn’t help us here in NJ – it helps people in New England, and people overseas if Downeast gets approved.

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828003
https://elibrary-backup.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828003

Finally I’ve begun uploading the PennEast pipeline route pictures I’ve been taking for the past several weeks. Parts 1-6 are now up on the FERC site. These were done as PDF exports of the web pages so they’re copies of the exact site. Parts 7-10 have been uploaded but are still pending confirmation from FERC as of this writing.

The purpose for this is two-fold. First, I think it could help PennEast and FERC if they see the actual locations where the pipeline is being proposed up close and personal. Put the farms, homes, schools, open spaces, preserved lands and parks that PennEast is targeting right in their faces.

The second, grimmer purpose is that if PennEast does go through these pictures will serve as documentation of what these lands look like before the pipeline. In the depressing event PennEast does get approved I will be revisiting all of these spots and taking “after” photos to show the devastation that PennEast is causing. I’ll then have another series showing each area in side by side before and after shots. If nothing else this could help future protestors for other pipeline projects, and having them up on ferc.gov will keep them safe and incontrovertible.

Pipeline route pictures part 1-3 (NJ):
http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828104
https://elibrary-backup.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828104

Pipeline route pictures part 4-6 (NJ):
http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828144
https://elibrary-backup.ferc.gov/idmws/common/opennat.asp?fileID=13828144

I almost choked on my lunch when I read this research paper about a Congressional bill to speed up the FERC process:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43138.pdf

While people and organizations impacted by pipeline infrastructure projects are saying “FERC, slow down!”, the energy industry is complaining bitterly that FERC approval takes too long, and they actually want to speed up the process dramatically.

The gist of the document is buried halfway through its summary:

The Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act (H.R. 161) seeks to expedite the federal review of certificate applications by imposing deadlines on the agencies involved. H.R. 161 would impose an explicit 12-month deadline on FERC certificate reviews for projects using FERC’s pre-filing procedures and would codify the commission’s 90-day regulatory deadline for any certificate related agency decisions. Any agency decision not meeting the 90-day deadline would be approved by default.

Can you believe that? Making a hard-and-fast deadline of exactly one year for the entire pre-filing procedure? And then mandating a mere 90 days for related agency decisions?

And then the coup de grâce – any agency decision not meeting the 90-day deadline would be approved by default.

The Obama administration has rightly denounced these types of provisions for a host of reasons, from the paper:

In the 113th Congress, the Obama Administration opposed deadline and default approval provisions like those in H.R. 161 because they…

“could create conflicts with existing statutory and regulatory requirements and practices related to agencies’ programs, thereby causing confusion and increasing litigation risk. The … requirements could force agencies to make decisions based on incomplete information or information that may not be available within the stringent deadlines, and to deny applications that otherwise would have been approved, but for lack of sufficient review time. For these reasons, the bill may actually delay projects or lead to more project denials, undermining the intent of the legislation.”

The real reason pipeline companies want their projects expedited is because they are under a severe time and financial crunch. Much of the Marcellus Shale “Boom” has been financed through loans and bond issuances. It financial terms their debt-to-equity ratio is very high. You could compare this to someone trying to start a small business using credit card debt to finance it. In general this is frought with risk and means the longer you go without a positive cashflow, the more money you’re going to lose (or you might just go bankrupt).

This is the situation Marcellus drillers are in. Shale gas “fracking” costs enormous amounts of money. Fracked wells don’t last very long and drillers have to constantly keep drilling new wells to keep volumes up, which in turn costs yet more money.

So they basically want FERC approval to go as fast as possible. And by proposing these “default approval” provisions to legislation they show they don’t really care about the environment, or conservation, or other concerns of people in their way. If the EPA is having a hard time doing a study on a large complicated pipeline project and will need more than 90 days to complete it, the industry says “tough”. Take 91 days and the project is auto-approved.

Forms of this bill have been passed twice by the House of Representatives (most recently in January 2015) but has not passed the Senate. The bill is opposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service, which are all agencies that would be impacted by this.