A federal appeals court rejected environmentalists’ claims against two liquefied natural gas export terminals on Tuesday, ensuring that the projects can move forward.
The Sierra Club had said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had erred in its environmental review when it approved the two projects in Texas and Louisiana.
The environmental group said the commission, the nation’s primary energy regulator, did not account for the cumulative impacts of increased fracking that would result from the approval of the export terminals.
But the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals slammed the environmental group’s argument, and said the commission followed the law and did not have to account for the additional impacts.
“The commission’s [environmental] analysis did not have to address the indirect effects of the anticipated export of natural gas,” the court’s decision stated on the Texas Freeport LNG facility. “That is because the Department of Energy, not the commission, has sole authority to license the export of any natural gas going through the Freeport facilities.” It made a similar assertion regarding a facility in Louisiana.
The Energy Department will review the FERC site approvals and make an ultimate decision on whether to grant an export permit. The Energy Department has been approving export terminals to begin shipping U.S. natural gas to foreign ports over the last year. It typically defers to the commission on any environmental impact assessment.
The Energy Department’s primary role is to assess the impact of shipping gas overseas on such things as maintaining adequate supplies domestically, and price fluctuations. It has not indicated it would assess a permit based on Sierra’s environmental criteria.
Sierra Club wants to curb the production of fossil fuels by going after pipelines and gas export facilities that they see as encouraging more natural gas production, which they say harms the goal of curbing global warming.
Sierra said the Tuesday decision was a loss for the environment. “This disappointing decision fails to address the significant environmental harms of increased gas exports, and is not the end of the road in this fight,” said Lena Moffitt, director of Sierra’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “There continues to be a groundswell of grassroots efforts adamant in stopping the extraction, burning and export of gas, and neither their efforts nor our legal efforts to block these dirty, dangerous projects will stop as result of today’s decisions.”
