BXE was back at the FERC meeting today! More report and notes below but first – Nominations are due tomorrow for folks to participate in FERC’s Environmental Justice Advisory Panel. Several good and long standing friends of ours have asked to be nominated and to participate in the process. We’ve sent an email to FERC formally nominating these folks with their contact information.
You can help by sending FERC and email supporting their nomination. Backing up our friends will (hopefully) increase the chance that FERC accepts their nomination. You can also write in yourself or anyone you think should be nominated to serve on FERC’s EJ panel at the end of March, 2023.
Earlier in the day
BXE attended the monthly FERC meeting, and supported a press conference by our friends at Frontlines to FERC, which featured stories and testimony from residents and activists from Freeport Texas. Freeport, you may remember, is home to a massive, FERC-approved, LNG terminal that exploded in the summer of 2022. FERC and PHMSA have been in the process of re-opening the Freeport LNG facility this month, while ignoring ongoing community opposition and concerns about safety and pollution. If you missed it, you can watch their press conference on our Facebook page:
The FERC hearing itself was unusually fast – starting right on time at 10am and ending less than an hour later after a flurry of unanimous decisions. No news or updates were announced at this month’s meeting about GNT Express, which we emailed you about earlier in the week So keep those calls and emails coming!
Nor did the Commissioners speak directly to the Freeport LNG facility or community concerns at the meeting – although our friends from Texas met separately with FERC staff later in the day – so we’ll see if they learned anything new soon.
Our flier at this month’s meeting included information about Freeport, GTN Express, the FERC EJ panel, and our ongoing campaign to reject Joe Manchin’s FERC by transforming the agency into a Federal Renewable Energy Commission (FREC).
Finally, a last minute addition to the FERC meeting agenda of a couple MVP dockets alarmed and concerned a number of us! MVP fighters from the POWHR coalition were at the hearing, and met with FERC staff later in the day to confirm that no new permits or decisions were issued regarding the MVP. Instead, according to news reports and expert advice from friends, it appears that FERC simply stood by their existing permits, and rejected a legal appeal from the Sierra Club and other partners to reconsider last year’s permit extension.
So that’s the news from FERC and some actions you can take. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you at some Atlanta forest defense and Stop Cop City solidarity actions next week!
Drew and the crew at Beyond Extreme Energy
Beyond Extreme Energy 