Federal utility regulators are poised to sign off on the nation’s first natural gas export terminal in the West, as Pacific Rim nations agree to a landmark trade deal Monday that would increase U.S. gas exports to Asia.
The $7 billion Jordan Cove terminal on Coos Bay in Oregon is slated to receive final approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December, after receiving a positive environmental review Friday.
The terminal would benefit landlocked states such as Colorado that want to begin shipping natural gas to Asia. Combined with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, approval of the terminal could be a boon for natural gas producers.
“If we have this facility, it cuts nine days off the shipping time to Asian markets,” Bonnie Petersen, executive director of the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado, told the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colo., on Sunday.
The Colorado association is one of several in the western part of the state actively supporting the multi-billion dollar Jordan Cove terminal.
The West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association is also backing the project, which would provide a market for the state’s vast natural gas production to begin feeding the Asian market, the newspaper reported.
On Monday morning, the leaders of nations that form the Pacific Rim agreed to the landmark Tran-Pacific Partnership, which could boost gas exports from the terminal by making it easier to ship gas abroad.
The agreement, once ratified, could slash import tariffs for U.S.-based natural gas exports to the 11 other nations involved in the trade deal. It also would streamline the country’s current gas export review process, according to the industry.
But environmentalists say the partnership would increase natural gas exports without new environmental safeguards being applied to the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has turned the U.S. into a leading oil and gas producers in just a matter of years.
Environmentalists say the negotiations for the trade deal have been clouded in secrecy, with very little understood on environmental safeguards included in the deal.
The deal will be announced later Monday from Atlanta where a dozen nations, including the U.S., began meetings last week to finalize the deal. The agreement represents 40 percent of the world’s trade, although China is not included.
