LNG

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has appointed a new Commissioner, Willie L. Phillips, who has been sworn in and now takes the agency to its full complement of five sitting members.

Phillips was nominated by President Joe Biden in September 2021 and confirmed by the Senate in November.

He replaces Republican Neil Chatterjee for a term expiring on June 30, 2026, and gives the left-wing Democratic Party a 3-2 FERC majority.

“He most recently serving on the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia (DC), where he has been chairman since 2018 and a commissioner since 2014,” said FERC.

“Before being appointed to the DC commission, Phillips served as the assistant general counsel for the North American Electric Reliability Corp.,” added the statement.

“He has also worked as a private lawyer, advising clients on regulatory compliance and policy matters and assisting in litigation and administrative proceedings at both the federal and state levels,” it added.

Glick agenda

Phillips was awarded a doctorate from Howard University School of Law and a bachelor of science from the University of Montevallo in Alabama.

With Phillips officially sworn in, FERC will now move ahead and use its 3-2 majority to pursue FERC Chairman Richard Glick left-wing agenda to impose curbs on the US oil and natural gas industry.

Glick has pushed for change at the agency on a number of issues, including greenhouse-gas emission regulations and what the left-wingers call “environmental justice“ in which they take any term and add the word “justice“ to the end. This policy will allow people outside of jurisdictions to hold up projects for years.

Glick is also leading Biden Administration efforts to revise and tighten policies before according new permits for natural gas infrastructure.

The other Democratic Party-supporting commissioner is Allison Clements, while Commissioner James Danly and Commissioner Mark C. Christie were Republican appointees.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee said the  Office of General Counsel would reorganize to more expeditiously process requests for rehearing of Natural Gas Act (NGA) orders filed by affected landowners. 

The announcement covering Section 7 certificate orders in the NGA builds on Chatterjee’s September 2019 pledge to refine the FERC process to prioritize rehearing requests involving landowner issues, with a target of issuing rehearing orders within 30 days and reducing the use of tolling orders. 

At that time, Chatterjee designated attorneys in the rehearings group of the Solicitor’s Office to focus on rehearing requests involving landowner issues.

“Our objective is to reinforce the Commission’s commitment to ensure landowners are afforded a judicially appealable rehearing order as quickly as possible,” said Chatterjee.

“I am confident that this action will help substantially reduce the amount of time we take to issue rehearing orders in these critical cases,” stated the FERC Chairman.

The measure will improve landowner rights in large-scale pipeline projects, though also in the LNG feed-gas pipeline permit area where the infrastructure is less than 100 miles in length.

LNG export projects, particularly in the second wave of ventures being development along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, have many affiliate pipelines and sometimes more than one.

Under the plan, Chatterjee has directed the creation of a new Rehearings section within OGC, akin to the six existing sections in that office: Energy Markets 1 and 2, Energy Projects, General and Administrative Law, the Solicitor’s Office and the Dispute Resolution Service.

The FERC said the Rehearings section will have two separate groups, a Landowner Rehearings group and a General Rehearings group. 

The Landowner Rehearings group will give first priority to landowner rehearing requests, and would work on other rehearing items only when time permits.

This allocation of resources, Chatterjee said, would allow for more timely action on expected landowner requests for rehearing. 

“We are hopeful that these actions will help alleviate the very real landowner concerns about timing and fairness in infrastructure cases implicating landowner rights,” Chatterjee said. 

“I remain committed to doing all we can to improve our FERC processes on this front,” he added.

US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee said at the plenary session of the Gastech 2019 conference in Houston that there were important potential climate benefits from US liquefied natural gas exports, especially for Asian countries.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Kevin McIntyre has died at his home in Arlington, Virginia, after an illness. He was 58 and had been nominated in August 2017 to head the FERC, the main regulatory body for LNG projects and other energy-related ventures.

The Administration of US President Donald Trump has named a lawyer from the state of Virginia employed by the Department of Energy to fill the vacant fifth seat at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the regulator of US energy and liquefied natural gas projects.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has set a deadline of June 25 for acceptance of comments on the future certification process for new interstate natural gas pipelines and facilities at a time when more onshore projects are required for shale gas to supply LNG export plants rather than for conventional fields offshore the Gulf of Mexico.

The US Center for Liquefied Natural Gas and other Washington-based industry bodies have welcomed the nomination of two candidates by President Donald Trump to fill vacancies on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and return the regulator of LNG and other projects to a quorum to take decisions.