The new Republican chairman of the House energy committee is bringing together friends and foes of the Dakota Access oil pipeline at a hearing Wednesday in an effort to find a middle ground to expand the nation’s energy infrastructure.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden, of Oregon, attended the committee’s first major hearing of the year — headed by two subcommittees — focused on the need to update the nation’s energy system, which would include building new pipelines, electricity transmission lines and power plants.
Updating and expanding infrastructure will be a key part of the committee’s agenda under the Donald Trump presidency. But Walden may be taking a lighter touch than the president. He wants the committee to listen to both the environmental concerns that groups have about pipeline development as well as the pro-development side.
“The Dakota Access pipeline is currently at the forefront of those headlines,” Walden said. “We know that this issue means a great deal to both parties involved, and we are here to listen.”
President Trump signed an executive order last month overriding an Obama administration order to delay the Dakota Access pipeline, even though the Army Corps of Engineers had completed all environmental siting for the pipeline, excluding a final 1.5-mile easement that tribal groups and environmentalists opposed.
After Trump’s order, the Army Corps approved the easement and the pipeline is moving forward, although a federal court in Washington is slated to weigh in on the pipeline decision at the end of the month.
Wednesday’s two-panel hearing includes members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has led forceful opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline over the last year, and the pipeline’s developers, Energy Transfer Partners.
“We want to learn from the ongoing challenges presented to us today to bring more accountability, transparency and predictability to the environmental permitting processes,” Walden added.
“It’s only by talking to each other, and not past each other, that we will be able to move past rhetoric and do what’s right for our communities,” the chairman said.
“The committee welcomes all sides to the debate and looks forward to the testimony,” he said, but added that “the Dakota Access pipeline is not the only project that is currently being challenged across the country.”
He said the “impacts and delays” from the environmental challenges bring increasing amounts of uncertainty and “do nothing to open up a productive conversation about the true risks and benefits of these types of projects.”
