Tag: Approval Process

There is no Appendix A

On March 26th, 2015, PennEast submitted a document to the FERC responding to FERC comments received after March 6th, as well as verbal comments from the scoping meetings.

In accordance with the Response to Scoping Comments, PennEast has continued to review and log comments posted to the docket after March 6, 2015, including comments documented in the scoping meeting transcripts. PennEast hereby responds to concerns raised in the comments posted to the docket between March 7, 2015 and March 20, 2015, including those raised in each of the five scoping meetings.

Appendix A provides four tables that identify the commenter, describe the issue or concern raised, and provide a response or cross-reference to address the specific concern. Specifically, Table 1 of Appendix A responds to comments from federal, state, and local agencies, Table 2 responds to comments from non-governmental Organizations, Table 3 responds to comments from affected landowners and abutters, and Table 4 responds to comments from other individuals. Each table groups the comments by issue, specifically identifies the commenters that raised the particular concern, and indicates the scoping meeting at which the commenter raised the concern.

PennEast is committed to addressing concerns raised by landowners and other stakeholders in this Pre-filing review process and the related certificate proceeding and will continue to work with stakeholders throughout the environmental review of the Project. All stakeholders will continue to have opportunities to provide comments on the Project.

All this sounds great, right? PennEast finally will respond to the verbal scoping meetings, let’s see what they have to say.

Except – there is no Appendix A.  All we get is PennEast’s intro letter and that’s it.

This document without an appendix was filed with the FERC four business days ago and it appears nobody has even noticed.

These are the people we’re forced to trust to build a safe and reliable 3 foot wide, high pressure natural gas super highway through our towns. Corporate flacks who can’t even remember to add a critical appendix to a submission, and a regulatory commission who doesn’t even notice the omission.

Residents furious at PennEast’s scoping responses

More local residents have expressed their outrage at PennEast’s awful scoping comments responses.

Janice from West Amwell NJ submitted a hand-written note to the FERC lambasting the company for dropping many of their scoping questions and lumping whole groups together into large categories without any real details being addressed. She writes (apologies for any typos, this is hand-transcribed by me):

This letter is in regard to the March 13, 2015 PennEast response to the scoping comments on Docket No. PF 15-1-000. My husband and I spent considerable time and energy to convey our most sincere concerns, objections, and questions in both our written and verbal scoping comments of which many were excluded from the PennEast response report. The PennEast report therefore is incomplete and unacceptable. Becauseit is PE’s and the FERC’s responsibilities to provide and monitor a thorough response report, we demand that our verbal and written scoping comments be re-read and satisfactorily reported in a specific manner addressing our concerns and answering our questions.

It is not our job to do yours or PennEast’s!

PennEast’s responses lumped concerns in general categories and did not reflect much thought or consideration to individual comments or concerns. We understand that our omissions are a common place poor practice that PennEast routinely provides and ask that you require PennEast to correct our omissions and mistakes, and accurately report on all comments made – reflecting its specific content in PennEast’s categories for a fair and just scoping and EIS process. Thank you.

Kim from Lambertville, NJ is a bit more…pointed…in her criticism of PennEast’s response:

I will be brief. The “Response” that PennEast provided to the scoping comments was a joke, and can be viewed as nothing more. Even FERC must admit that thousands of pages of extremely detailed, substantiated
comments and scientific arguments cannot be addressed with a couple of paragraphs of what appears to be boilerplate language. Very, very few concerns received what I would consider an actual response. Many parties
have already pointed out that a huge number of concerns brought up in scoping comments were not even listed, let alone addressed, and some of my comments too, fell into that category, including many concerns regarding the safety of the proposed line. In addition, many names were missing, or listed under the wrong classification, including, I believe, my own. It seems that even the simplest task of listing all commenters
and knowing if each is a landowner or not was beyond the capabilities of PennEast. How can you possibly approve ANY project under PE’s direction that involves high pressure gas, or anything else of a dangerous nature? They haven’t even mastered Microsoft Office. (Perhaps this explains the safety records and number of people killed by the companies involved.)

But back to the response. PennEast begins its response by indicating that said response is pursuant to 18 C.F.R. § 157.21(f)(9), which says, “Upon the Director’s issuance of a notice commencing a prospective applicant’s pre-filing process, the prospective applicant must… (9) Within 14 days of the end of the scoping comment period, respond to issues raised during scoping.” Surely implied in that requirement is a certain level of adequacy of the required response. Otherwise, a company could simply write a response that said “Pipelines are good”, and it would qualify. I would therefore ask FERC to please define for me the criteria that constitute an adequate response, and explain how PE’s response met those criteria. Clearly, even if the rudimentary task of accurately listing all scoping comment topics, and the people who commented on them, followed by boiler plate language that is copied from one pipeline project to another was FERC’s definition of an adequate response, PE failed.

And that brings me to my next question. What are the consequences of PE’s failure to comply with 18 C.F.R. § 157.21(f)(9)? Hopefully denial of the project. This project SHOULD be denied, based on, if nothing else, the ineptitude of the companies involved.

Thank you, and I look forward to your response.

I can only agree with Janice and Kim, PennEast’s response is wholly inadequate and really is a slap in the face to everyone who worked hard to provide details comments to the FERC. Beyond the time of individuals you also have to consider the time and effort and money spent by municipalities and organizations along the route. I know West Amwell have spent a tremendous amount of time analyzing the route and coming up with very detailed issues they are considered about, and PennEast more or less ignored them. The same is true of other townships here and in PA.

I can only hope that under the new FERC director, Norman Bay, that FERC starts enforcing their regulations and takes PennEast to task for this pitiful response. If not, all I can say is that we have the basis for a number of lawsuits against both the FERC and PennEast right here. If FERC won’t do its job maybe the courts will force them to.

Janice’s submission – FERC Generated Submission

Janice’s submission – FERC Generated Submission Alternate Site

Kim’s submission – FERC Generated PDF

Kim’s submission – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

West Amwell Township responds to PennEast’s boilerplate scoping replies

I’m immensely proud of the political leadership in my town of West Amwell. The elected and designated officials of our town have been fighting against PennEast from the beginning, and their focus and dedication on this issue has been relentless.

Our town’s pipeline committee has seen PennEast’s ridiculous boilerplate replies to the scoping comments, and has submitted a very detailed document of all of the things PennEast missed.

The committee’s response is available here, and is signed by Cathy Urbanksi, Chair of the West Amwell Pipeline Committee, and George Fisher, mayor.

Here’s a link to the FERC alternate site in case the main one above is down.

It mentions the National Heritage Priority Site on Goat Hill that PennEast missed.

The specific, unique reasons lands have been preserved in the Sourlands that PennEast did not address.

The details of our C1 water ways and drinking water situation that PennEast ignored.

Our township officials have had to educate PennEast on the realities of blasting in hard diabase bedrock. Earth to PennEast – shaped charges do not mitigate vibration in bedrock. Shaped charges in fact focus more of the blast into the diabase. Our concerns do not consider just debris from blasting (although this is important). Our concerns relate the fact that diabase is a highly efficient medium for conducting blast waves, and that those waves can collapse the fissures in the bedrock that we rely on for our wells.

On these and many more points our township committee has had to educate and chastise PennEast for it’s woefully inadequate response.

They close with this summary:

The scoping period was “to solicit comments on the scope of the environmental review for the Project from interested stakeholders.”

West Amwell Township spent considerable time and resources preparing the scoping comments and expressing our specific concerns. It appears that they were ignored or just not read by PennEast. It is not possible for PennEast to prepare a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement when the scoping period comments were mostly disregarded.

Of the comments that PennEast did respond to, most did not address specific issues and concerns. They were boilerplate and stock responses. The “interested stakeholders” were treated very unfairly and not in accordance with the regulations:

“Pursuant to Section 157.21(f)(9) of the Commission’s regulations, 18 C.F.R. § 157.21(f)(9) (2014), PennEast submits, in Appendix A hereto, its response to comments posted to the above-referenced docket.”

Lest I offend the other towns along the pipeline route by over doing it with West Amwell, let me hurry to say that opposition against the pipeline has been unanimous in NJ, and has been swelling in PA for some months, and the level of detail and commitment in those towns has been simply outstanding overall. I keep thinking back to the scoping meeting in Hampton, NJ where the mayor of Kingwood Township stood up for his comments and basically raked PennEast over the coals, demanding the company guarantee drinking water for every single resident in his town for a decade or more after construction.

If you’re in one of those towns that hasn’t passed a resolution in opposition of PennEast, send them links to comments like these. Show them what a united front of townships up and down the route can do.

Let’s take a look at the Downeast LNG DOE Submission

The first big step for any company that wants to consider LNG exporting out of the United States is to get permission from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). They have to make a case for their export terminal being reasonable and desirable, that they can build it safely, and that they’ll be shipping it responsibly to countries we trust.

The DOE recently approved the application from Downeast LNG, Inc to build an import/export station (but note it’s mostly for export).

First Downeast gives us the basics:

Pursuant to Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act (“NGA”)…Downeast LNG, Inc. (“DELNG”) hereby requests that DOE, Office of Fossil Energy (“DOE/FE”), grant long-term, multi-contract authorization for DELNG to engage in exports of domestically-produced liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) in an amount up to 173 million British thermal units (“MMBtu”) per year, which is equivalent to approximately 168 billion standard cubic feet (“Bcf”) of natural gas per year, for a 20 year period.

So their facility is going to liquify and ship up to 168 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas, or 460 million cubic feet a day. Recall that PennEast is setup to produce up to 1 billion cubic feet a day.

Downeast then tells us how they’re going to get the gas to their facility:

DELNG proposes to source natural gas to be used as feedstock for LNG production at the DELNG Project from U.S. and Canadian gas fields via the interstate pipeline system. The DELNG Project will interconnect with the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline (“M&NP”), which in turn interconnects with Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (“PNGTS”), Algonquin Gas Transmission System (“AGT”), and the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (“TGP”). Each of these three pipelines provides a distinct route to access eastern gas fields that the DELNG Project could use to source gas. Given regional demand, Kinder Morgan (the owner of TGP), Spectra (the owner of the AGT and partial owner of M&NP), and TransCanada (the owner of PNGTS), have each separately proposed capacity expansions for their existing system, or greenfield builds that would supply the region.

So this facility will be getting gas from interstate pipelines including The Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) system owned by….Spectra Energies.

You may recognize Spectra Energies as being a part-owner of the PennEast pipeline. PennEast will have interconnections to the AGT.

But would they really connect to a pipeline like PennEast, who’s source is Marcellus Shale gas? Here’s what they have to say on that:

The DELNG Project is encouraged by the increase in domestic natural gas production in the U.S., in particular, the rapid and sustained growth of gas fields in northeastern Pennsylvania. The production of natural gas in the producing regions in Pennsylvania and West Virginia now exceeds 14 Bcf per day (“Bcf/d”), based on estimates in the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) May 2014 Drilling Productivity Report (“DPR”). Despite the rapid growth of U.S. natural gas production, some question whether it can be sustained unless new markets are found, given the low wellhead gas prices and a constrained gas pipeline delivery system. The EIA noted in a recent Short-Term Energy Outlook that:

[r]apid natural gas production growth in the Marcellus formation is contributing to falling natural gas forward prices in the Northeast, which often fall even with or below Henry Hub prices outside of peak winter demand months. Consequently, some drilling activity may move away from the Marcellus back to Gulf Coast plays such as the Haynesville and Barnett, where prices are closer to the Henry Hub spot price

So the answer there is “yes”. Downeast is being built specifically to receive gas from the Marcellus region.

Further down into the document Downeast gives us a real corker of a justification for their export facility:

4- Supply-Demand Balance Demonstrates the Lack of National and Regional Need

Recent trends in the U.S. natural gas market, in particular in the U.S. Northeast, make evident that the request for authorization to export domestic natural gas as LNG from the DELNG Project is consistent with the public interest.

U.S. natural gas production has been growing at more than twice the rate of domestic demand growth since 2005. The U.S. gas market has been unable to absorb the rapid increase, particularly in constrained gas production basins, leading to lower well-head prices, and forcing the shut-in of actively-producing wells, creating spare production capacity, non-productive resources, and a redeployment of production resources to unconstrained gas-producing regions and to oil fields.

So Downeast comes right out and says what everybody knows but didn’t want to put in writing – there is no national or regional demand for Marcellus shale gas. For the purposes of PennEast let me focus on the regional side. They make it plain – the NorthEast doesn’t need the gas from the PennEast pipeline. We’ve got tons of spare production capacity that has no where to go. It’s so bad they’ve actually been shutting down wells. The collapse of prices in the oil market have had an additional knock-on effect of causing even more well closures as natural gas follows oil’s suit and hits historic lows.

But wait, there’s more! Downeast quantifies the difference for us:

Based on these scenarios, discussed above, domestic demand growth for natural gas will average between 0.7% and 0.9% annually with total estimated demand of between 28.45 Tcf and 30.55 Tcf by 2040. However, over this same time period, domestic natural gas production is projected to grow between 1.5% and 1.7% annually, or approximately twice the rate of growth in domestic natural gas demand. Domestic natural gas production will exceed domestic demand by over 25% for both the Reference Case and High Economic Growth Case, or between 7.6 Tcf and 7.9 Tcf (20.9 Bcf/d to 21.7 Bcf/d) by 2040.

So shale gas producers are actually producing twice as much gas as we’ll need for growth.

Finally we come to the appendixes, which gives all of the data used to support their application. This area is lengthy but one part caught my eye in particular. There’s a section that talks about supply routes, and basically details where Downeast might get its gas from.

One portion talks about the “Spectra Route”:

The Spectra Route provides an opportunity for DELNG shippers to source natural gas from the Marcellus/Utica region at upstream points on Algonquin’s system (i.e., Lambertville, New Jersey or Ramapo, New York) and then transport it on one of Spectra’s proposed pipeline expansions into New England.

Lambertville, NJ? Does that ring a bell? It does to me – Lambertville is where the PennEast pipeline interconnects with the Algonquin pipeline system owned by Spectra Energy. In the above quote Downeast is proposing to use that interconnection to get Marcellus gas via PennEast.

And there you have it folks. Does anyone still have any doubt that a significant portion of the PennEast gas is going over seas now?

Resident thinks the FERC is “short-sighted and just plain stupid”

Like many FERC commentors, Dana from Easton, PA doesn’t pull her punches. She believes the FERC is short-sighted and stupid, and PennEast has comported itself in a misleading and unethical manner.

I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed PennEast gas pipeline. Most of the properties it crosses have been preserved with either federal, state or local funds for preservation of open space. How
can a for profit endeavor outweigh the will of the taxpayers who chose to protect their land?

PennEast has NOT shown that there is a need or want for this project. I have been following the FERC filings very closely, and of the almost 800 filings I’ve saved to my hard drive, only 2 dozen or so have been in support, and all but 4 of these were from individuals, not corporate entities. Doesn’t that tell you something?

Regarding PennEast’s actions during this profiling period, there does not appear to be a coordinated regional plan for pipelines, even within FERC. FERC reviews each application in isolation, without regard to the cumulative effect on the region. This is short-sighted and just plain stupid. Also, PennEast has been deliberately vague in providing the public with the information regarding the actual route of the pipeline, has deliberately scheduled the few meetings with the public at inappropriate locations and at inconvenient times, and has overall been NOT forthright in providing the information the public needs, and is entitled to, to make informed decisions regarding support or opposition to this project. I find their actions in this matter to be misleading and unethical.

When PennEast suggests that this will bring “affordable gas to millions of homes in NJ and PA”, I have my doubts. Most of the affected lands along the course of this proposed pipeline are rural… we do NOT have any natural gas infrastructure in place, nor will there ever be. This is clearly a plan to enrich the owners and stockholders of the energy conglomerates, with no concern for the actual landholders affected.

And what of the natural lands, flora and fauna of the region? PennEast seems to care little for their welfare, only for the profits they may reap.

Finally, there have been numerous scientific findings regarding the fragile geography of the region- karst geology, sinkholes, fault lines, etc. that suggest further disturbing the topography of the region would
be a very BAD idea.

For these reasons, and for those expressed in the overwhelming opposition expressed by others on this forum, I strongly urge FERC to reject this project.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter of dire importance.

I completely agree with Dana on all points, and I think in particular the FERC needs to not acccept PennEast’s vague hand-waving and assertions. I believe federal regulations require that FERC must force PennEast to be extremely specific in their plans and their responses to scoping comments. I could spend a year documenting all of the instances where PennEast is deficient in this respect, but some of the most egregious ones include:

  • A vague and changing pipeline route.
  • Vague assertions that they will follow “industry standards” without specifying exactly which ones
  • Hand waving about “heating 4.7 million homes” without actually breaking down the expected consumption by end users
  • Saying they will re-route where “practical”, with no indication of what they consider practical or not
  • Hand waving about “mitigation”.  How do you mitigate ripping out orchards and reduced crop damage?
  • Saying they will “compensate” owners of preserved lands.  How can you compensate someone for losing their preservation status?
  • Lumping serious individual concerns on a wide variety of locales with ecological, historical, and cultural impact into single generic buckets in their scoping responses

As I say, the list goes on and on.  We can only hope that the FERC wakes up and starts doing its regulatory duty here.  Either force PennEast to give specific answers to specific concerns, or hit them with the “No Build” option and call it a day.

 
Dana’s submission is available below:

Dana’s submission – FERC Generated PDF

Dana’s submission – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

 

West Trenton scoping meeting transcripts are up

The transcript from the West Trenton meeting that I missed are up. I’ve only skimmed it in a few places but it’s exciting reading, including testimony from environmental and preservation specialist who also happens to have a farm on Pleasant Valley Road that is part of Baldpate Mountain. Skip to page 189 for Cynthia Goldsmith’s testimony for that one.

West Trenton Meeting Transcript – FERC Generated PDF

West Trenton Meeting Transcript – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site