FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jimmy Betts, info@BeyondExtremeEnergy.org

Three Arrested Attempting to Block Fast-Tracked FERC Commissioner Approvals

WASHINGTON, DC: The week following Trump’s announcement that he will pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, three individuals representing a coalition of nearly 170 groups opposing Trump’s nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) disrupted a committee vote to advance the candidates. Three individuals were arrested during the committee vote.  They stood up and spoke out about FERC’s abusive practices and disregard for the environment.

The coalition, made up of local and national groups focused on various issues, is demanding that senators vote no on Trump’s nominations until the Senate holds investigations into FERC’s the abuses of power and law. The campaign has been building for more than five months and has included call-in’s, letter-writing drives, Twitter storms, lobby days, and civil resistance focused on educating senators and pressuring them to oppose the nominations. The coalition has extensive documentation of FERC’s abuses of power and law to back up their demands.

So far, the Senate has showed an unwillingness to protect the public from pollution, climate change, and eminent domain seizures of land that result from FERC’s mandate to rubber stamp fracked-gas infrastructure. Now that Trump is pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, the coalition says it’s even more unacceptable for senators to approve Trump’s nominations, one of whom, Mitch McConnell energy staffer Neil Chatterjee, is a climate denier.

This disruption followed a similar one the coalition carried out two weeks ago when the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources  met to question Trump’s nominees. The coalition has vowed to continue the fight to Resist FERC and the abusive, exploitative world it represents and perpetuates.  

“As a New York City resident I am outraged by FERC,” said Jess Rechtschaffer, who was arrested this morning. ”It is criminal that that FERC approves wholesale land grabs so that the fossil fuel industry can install pipelines via eminent domain in the vicinity of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant.  FERC has never seen a dirty energy project they didn’t like from the Dakotas to NY.”

“FERC approves fossil fuel infrastructure; fossil fuels worsen climate change; the world loses and the fossil fuel industry profits. The Senate needs to overhaul FERC.” said Sid Madison from New Jersey, also arrested this morning for disrupting the vote to call attention to FERC practices.

“Climate leaders don’t support fracking or fracking infrastructure buildout, and true conservatives don’t support eminent domain for corporate gain,” said Ted Glick, an organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy and another who was arrested for disrupting the committee vote. “Senators should vote no on both of Trump’s FERC nominees, big supporters of 20th century energy sources in the 17th year of the 21st century. We need a Federal Renewable Energy Agency, not a fossil fuel industry-controlled FERC.”

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https://beyondextremeenergy.org/2017/06/06/press-release-three-arrested-attempting-to-block-fast-tracked-ferc-commissioner-approvals

Images & Video from this action (check for updated content throughout the day):

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9au4UKSykxhN2ZxSnUtSTI5aEk

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jimmy Betts, info@beyondextremeenergy.org 

 

FIVE PROTESTERS DISRUPT FERC COMMISSIONER HEARING

Four people arrested.  Hearing disrupted for 20 minutes.

WASHINGTON, DC – Once accustomed to operating in the shadows, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and its controversial role in permitting harmful and unnecessary fracked-gas infrastructure was thrown into the limelight on Thursday morning when five people disrupted the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s confirmation hearing for President Trump’s nominations to the Commission, causing delay while speakers tried to proceed.  After the hearing was called to order, and introductions occurred, protesters methodically, yet unpredictably, loudly exclaimed  “FERC hurts families, Shut FERC down!” and “FERC hurts families, FERC hurt towns” and “The future is watching”. One protester said “I am compelled to interrupt this because I have seen the damage of climate change”. The protesters were ejected, four arrested and one detained. FERC has been debilitated since January when Commissioner Norman Bay resigned and left the Commission without the quorum of three it needs to issue permits. Protesters also spoke out: “FERC is killing Pennsylvanians.”  

The disrupters represent a coalition of more than 160 organizations that have pledged to fight Trump’s nominations to FERC. Their message is simple: Until Congress investigates the agency’s abuses of power and law, the Senate must not approve new FERC Commissioners. Until now, their opposition has come in the form of call-in’s, letter-writing campaigns, and lobby days focused on educating the Senators and pressuring Senators to vote against all of Trump’s FERC nominees. The coalition has extensive documentation of FERC’s abuses of power and law and has presented it to the Senators over the last few months. Thursday’s action marked an escalation in the campaign. In addition to delaying a restoration of FERC’s quorum for as long as possible, the action was meant to show the increasingly potent political consequences if the Senate allows FERC to continue hurting communities, the environment, and global climate.

“FERC is an arm of the oil and gas industries,” said Lee Stewart, an organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy and one of those arrested in the hearing room. “Their rubber-stamping of fracked gas permits disregards the harms such projects inflict on communities, towns, and the climate. Because of the great violence FERC inflicts on the world, it’s important to do everything possible to stop or delay them. Until FERC is replaced with an agency dedicated to a just transition off fossil fuels and to an exploitation-free energy system based on localized, renewable energy, business as usual is unacceptable.”

Randy Fenstermacher of Massachusetts said, “History will show that the oil crisis of the 1970’s led to the evolution of FERC in its current state, and pales in comparison to abrupt global climate change already underway.  We need a new organization of the energy sector.  To Congress, we say, ‘Don’t nominate, innovate.’  FERC is not positioned to transition to renewable, non-exploitative systems of localized energy generation.”  

ACTION IMAGES & VIDEOS:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9au4UKSykxhNnlYd2FRWDlhWXM

 

NEWS RELEASE (re-published from EDGE)

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Contact: EDGE Angela Vogel 206-579-9309 or Elizabeth Arnold 267-745-7041

HUMAN PIPELINE BRINGS MESSAGE TO GAS PROFITEERS:

WE DON’T WANT A FOSSIL FUEL FUTURE – RENEWABLE ENERGY NOW!

Philadelphia – A group of Pennsylvania residents claimed eminent domain today for a right-of-way through the lobby of a Penn’s Landing hotel during two energy industry conferences. Using their own bodies and lengths of industrial tubing, they built their own pipeline to carry their message to industry and government officials who want to double down on investment in fossil fuels and fracking instead of shifting to  renewable energy sources.

The Hilton Philadelphia at Penn’s Landing is hosting two conferences this week: The Natural Gas for Power Generation (NPGP) Summit on the conversion of coal-fired electrical generation plants to gas, and the Association of Energy Services Professionals spring conference.

“Converting coal-fired plants to gas often really means building a new gas-fired plant. It’s another investment that justifies more fracking, more pipelines to Philadelphia and more pollution,” said Meenal Raval, a Mt. Airy business owner. “Using fracked gas for power causes a path of destruction from wells, pipelines, and compressor stations through thousands of communities.”

The chairman of the NPGP Summit is Michael Krancer, who served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and then returned to his partnership at Blank Rome, where he heads the law firm’s Energy, Petrochemical & Natural Resources Practice. Krancer is also a member of the Greater Philadelphia Energy Action Team, a trade group that recently announced plans to seek public funding for a massive natural gas pipeline to Philadelphia.

“This is the revolving door in action,” said Angela Vogel of EDGE (Ending Dirty Gas Exploitation). “The same people go back and forth between government and industry, working together to keep profiting by poisoning us.”

On Monday an NGPG session called How to Overcome Environmentalist & Community Opposition and Accelerate the Approval Process included the topic “How to influence regulators and dominate the regulatory review and permitting process.” Tuesday morning featured pipeline proponent Philip Rinaldi, CEO of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions, whose refinery has suffered multiple fires in the past two years and produces two-thirds of the toxic air emissions from industrial sources in Philadelphia.

Built along two tidal rivers, Philadelphia is the city second-most at risk to power outages from climate-change-fueled storms. Members of the public who brought their message to the conferences say that reliance on fossil fuels undermines global efforts to slow climate change and locks the city and the state into decades of fossil fuel use while the rest of the world shifts to energy efficiency and renewables.

“Monday’s presenter on community opposition said, ‘Listen, listen, listen’ to what communities tell you. We are telling these industries that Philadelphia wants clean energy, not the fossil fuels that are making Philadelphia the asthma capital of the Northeast, poisoning our drinking water, scarring our state with pipelines, and destroying our planet,” said Elizabeth Arnold of EDGE (Encouraging Development of a Green Economy).

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CONGRESSMAN ENGEL CRITICIZES FERC’S DECISION NOT TO REHEAR ALGONQUIN PIPELINE

02/08/16 – originally posted: https://engel.house.gov/latest-news1/congressman-engel-criticizes-fercs-decision-not-to-rehear-algonquin-pipeline/

For Immediate Release

Monday, November 2

Contact: Kelly Canavan, (301) 237-5040

Hi-res photos available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boadumpdominion

Activists Suspended From Upper Deck of Stadium During Monday Night Football to Protest Bank of America Financing of LNG Export Terminal 

We Are Cove Point demands Bank of America stop financing Dominion’s Cove Point LNG export terminal and other fracked gas infrastructure

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA — In protest of Bank of America’s role in financing the planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Cove Point, Maryland, activists from We Are Cove Point have suspended themselves from the upper deck of Bank of America Stadium during the Monday Night Football game between the Charlotte Panthers and the Indianapolis Colts. They dropped a banner that reads, “BoA: Dump Dominion, WeAreCovePoint.org,” that was seen by the stadium audience of more than 70,000 people.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) has played a major role in financing Dominion Resources (NYSE: D) and its $3.8 billion LNG export facility at Cove Point through Dominion Midstream (NYSE: DM). Bank of America is part of a consortium of banks that is lending Dominion up to $4 billion to finance several planned gas infrastructure projects. In June 2013, Bank of America also underwrote $275 million to contribute to the capital expense of the Dominion Cove Point facility. We Are Cove Point activists are now calling on Bank of America and other lending institutions to stop financing Dominion.

Since oil and gas prices have plummeted, industry experts have increasingly seen LNG export facilities as bad investments, and the financial sector has been inexplicably propping up the gas industry. As recently as August, a report from Bank of America itself warned that plummeting crude oil prices have hurt the prospects of LNG export projects. President and CEO Zin Smati of Engie’s GDF Suez Energy North America said, “You cannot ship gas from the United States anymore. … Nobody really is making money from LNG now. Certainly, we are not.”

Dominion Cove Point is a proposed LNG export terminal that is slated to send up to 1.8 billion cubic feet of LNG to Japan and India. The facility would be the only one in the world to be built in a densely populated area, in violation of basic safety siting standards. It would drive demand for harmful fracking across the Mid-Atlantic, emit more than 20 tons of hazardous air pollutants each year, and spew two million tons of greenhouse gases, making it Maryland’s fourth-largest climate polluter. LNG exports are predicted to increase domestic gas prices, resulting in economic loss for every major sector of the US economy besides the gas industry, according to a Navigant Consulting report commissioned by Dominion Cove Point and a NERA economic consulting report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy.

As more communities organize against the encroachment of gas infrastructure, Bank of America and other lending institutions are facing increasing pressure to stop financing dirty energy projects that negatively impact the lives and well-being of those living near export terminals, pipelines, compressor stations, fracking wells and gas-fired power plants.

A broad, strong coalition of people has been actively resisting Dominion Cove Point at every step since the fall of 2013. We Are Cove Point is a leading part of the effort to stop Dominion Cove Point and reclaim the Cove Point community from Dominion’s grip.

Participants in tonight’s action made the following comments:

“Bank of America is allowing companies like Dominion to operate without checks and balances,” said John Nicholson. “They are giving money directly to Dominion with full knowledge of the health and safety risks of building an LNG export facility, and they need to be accountable to that.”

Rica Madrid said, “America doesn’t need more cheap fuel on the market, and we especially don’t need to export those resources overseas. Dominion is building a facility that would contribute to the economic crisis our country is facing. Bank of America is financing the Cove Point LNG plant, and the surrounding community in Southern Maryland is forced to bear the human cost. This is unacceptable.”

For more information, visit WeAreCovePoint.org and DumpDominion.org.

from SNL 10/01/2015

Environmental groups burn bridges with gas industry at press conference

Gone are the days where the Sierra Club might try to work with the oil and gas industry to limit its impact on the environment.

Representatives from its Dirty Fuels Campaign and a group spawned out of opposition to Keystone XL made clear at an energy policy event in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 1 that there is little or no common ground left between their organizations and energy producers.

“The science is increasingly coming up that climate change is here, we’re feeling the impacts, they are just going to get worse, and we need to act quickly and boldly,” Lena Moffitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Dirty Fuels Campaign, said at the event. “What that means is we leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground.”

Moffitt said climate change “is the frame in which we need to make all of our energy infrastructure decisions going forward,” which means stopping new pipelines from being built and leaving untouched 80% of the remaining coal reserves, 50% of the remaining gas reserves and 30% of the remaining oil reserves.

“Pipelines lock us into the energy of the past,” said Jane Kleeb, founder of the advocacy group Bold Nebraska that has fought TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline project. Furthermore, she said, through the use of eminent domain, “the energy companies come in and take [people’s] land against their will.”

“Do we use natural gas and oil now? Yes. Do we need to continue to build infrastructure that locks us into that energy of the past that also rips our land and water? Absolutely not,” Kleeb said. “And we’ve changed the game. Citizens like me, citizens like Lena … we’ve changed the energy game and we’re not going to back down.”

The approach confounded a gas industry leader and a Republican U.S. senator at the same Oct. 1 Politico news event sponsored by WGL Holdings Inc. They said common ground could be found with environmental groups and landowners on issues ranging from climate change to the use of eminent domain.

Marty Durbin, president and CEO of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, said the U.S. must use all its energy resources. “What is our energy future here?” he asked. “How are we going to take advantage of all the fuel sources we have? From a natural gas standpoint, we have an opportunity — not only with the abundance of natural gas here, but the ability to provide cleaner air, cleaner energy, drive economic growth for the country, and also enhancing our energy security, both here and abroad.”

“We’ve got to have pipeline expansions to be able to do that,” Durbin continued. “And the communities the pipelines are going through — of course they are going to have questions and concerns, and we’ve got to be part of that dialogue. But I think unfortunately we’ve gotten into a conversation that starts and ends with ‘we don’t want them.'”

Speakers touch hot topics

The two factions were on opposite ends of their energy infrastructure panel at the Politico event. Durbin and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., are working to improve a permitting system that, while it might be slow going in the eyes of gas infrastructure developers, generally works for them. The speakers took the high road and expressed an interest in dialogue.

Moffitt and Kleeb, facing a U.S. permitting system that mostly lets projects go forward over their objections, were more willing to lob incendiary comments that set fire to the idea of the two sides ever working together.

Hoeven, the author of legislation to streamline cross-border energy projects, agreed with Kleeb that it was important to treat landowners well, and energy companies should use eminent domain carefully. The senator pointed out that new pipelines would prevent oil and gas producers from flaring gas in production regions that currently lack infrastructure. And he pointed out that no matter what energy resources the U.S. chooses, even renewable energy sources, transmission infrastructure will have to be built.

“You still have the issue of dealing with landowners,” Hoeven said. “That’s not going to go away, regardless of your fuel choice.”

“Right, but some of the energy sources are poisonous,” Moffitt said, and some are not.

Durbin objected to that description. He said the U.S. has hundreds of thousands of miles of major pipelines in place. “We don’t have a poisonous wasteland around the country,” he said.

Hoeven said the U.S. needs to encourage investment in energy by, among other things, providing certainty in regulation. For renewables and traditional sources, he said, “if we continue to empower investment both in energy production and in infrastructure, we will get more energy, better environmental stewardship” and make the market more safe and more efficient, and other countries will then adopt the new technology.

“That’s been the hallmark of America,” Hoeven said. “We are the entrepreneurs, we’re the investors, we’re the inventors, we’re the innovators.”

In the end, the belief in U.S. innovation was one all the speakers could share.

“Like Sen. Hoeven, I believe in an America that is innovative and entrepreneurial, and I think in the face of the greatest crisis the planet has ever known … America will lead the way into the clean energy future,” Moffitt said, noting such technological advances as battery storage. “I think we can get there.”

https://www.snl.com/InteractiveX/article.aspx?ID=34047784&KPLT=4

http://www.politico.com/events/2015/10/americas-energy-agenda-whats-next-213895

A follow up climate justice action to Pope Francis’s visit to Washington, D.C.

Visuals: 50-foot United States of Fracking banner and No New Permits quilt

Audio: Short statements from fasters and clergy; singing; chanting

Facebook event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/397353760461766/

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On Friday, Sept. 25, fasters from Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE), together with their supporters and leaders from several faiths, will break bread in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in D.C to end a dramatic eighteen-day fast undertaken to demand that FERC stop issuing permits for the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG export terminals that use fracked natural gas, and instead heed Pope Francis’s call to care for the Earth.

On Friday copies of the Pope’s encyclical will be presented to the five FERC commissioners; and there will be music, brief statements, and a procession, featuring BXE’s colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, “The United Sates of Fracking”, around the FERC headquarters block, to honor the Planet and the People. BXE will also display the new quilt made in collaboration between fasters and residents of far-flung communities fighting fracking infrastructure in their communities.

Steve Norris, of North Carolina, at 72 is one of the oldest fasters. Describing what he has learned during the fast, he said:

“Being here, eating no food for 18 days, has taken me at 72 the oldest faster a fascinating and disorienting rabbit hole, where ‘normal’ appears absurd and even suicidal, and where unrealistic may be our only way out. I think because of our legal structures, because of their narrow fossil fuel focus, and because people disbelieve in viable alternatives, their minds are wedded to the madness of more fossil fuels.”

Sean Glenn, of Connecticut, at 23 is one of the youngest fasters. “I think this fast has just reinforced my belief in the power of people and our ability to overcome our old ways and really embrace new ones with complete curiosity, not knowing what we’re getting into,” she says. “The love that everyone has shown has been really powerful and the respect that we’re receiving for it is what has surprised me.”

WHERE: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), 888 1st St NE, Washington, DC.

WHEN: Friday, Sept. 25, noon to 1:30 p.m.

WHO: The fasters, their supporters, and faith leaders.

WHY: The BXE fasters demand that FERC end its fracking-friendly support for expanding natural gas infrastructure, which has led to a toxic locked-in fossil fuel network at the expense of safe, sound, and clean renewable energy. Fracking wells and gas pipelines contaminate the homes and communities nearby, and also leak methane, which is responsible for about 25% of the man-made global warming we experience today.

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Beyond Extreme Energy is a network of people and organizations dedicated to raising public awareness of the disastrous effects of fracking, natural gas infrastructure, and other kinds of extreme energy extraction; to taking direct action to stop them, and to promoting policies based on clean and safe renewable energy.

Press Advisory: For more information, text or call Melinda Tuhus, 203.623.2186 (Ted Glick, secondary contact: 973.460.1458.)

Hunger Strike grows at Federal Energy Regulatory Commission demanding No New Permits

Beyond Extreme Energy will hold press conference Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 10:30 a.m. on 15th day of their water-only fast, leading up to Pope’s visit. Outside FERC headquarters, 888 1st St. NE, D.C.  

Two women have traveled across the country to join Beyond Extreme Energy’s 18-day fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Their communities have been directly harmed by the permits FERC has issued or has pending regarding fracked gas infrastructure. A dozen members of BXE began their fast September 8 calling on FERC to stop issuing new permits. This is in line with Pope Francis’s call in his recent encyclical for the world’s leaders to immediately address the already devastating impacts of climate change – fueled by the burning of fossil fuels – especially on the poor who have contributed the least to the problem.

Pramilla Malick is the mother of four and a resident of Minisink, New York, where the Millennium Pipeline, owned by parent company NiSource, built a compressor station. She says that FERC approved it over the concerns of residents about methane and other toxic emissions, and the risk of catastrophic explosion.

“FERC enables the egregious excesses of a predatory industry that destroys communities such as mine, where many of my neighbors have been forced to flee because of this FERC permit. Our stories, however, of being fracked-by-FERC forewarn of even deeper looming crises; a climate crisis, democracy crisis, and human crisis all in one. We need bold action by multitudes to change course, so that my children, your children, and all our children are not robbed of their right to a future.”

Francis Eatherington flew to Washington, D.C. from Oregon to join the fast.

“I am here to help FERC understand that the Jordan Cove LNG Export Project on the Oregon coast and the 230-mile long Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline are reckless investments,” she says, “violating the laws of nature — the former being sited in an earthquake zone, the latter through forests prone to frequent forest fires. In fact, a forest fire is currently raging over part of the proposed route. It would also violate private property rights, as FERC is getting ready to issue a foreign company (Veresen, from Canada) the right to condemn the land of over 300 Oregonians to build the pipeline. And I’m one of those landowners. FERC will force me to host infrastructure that will lock us into using global warming fuels for at least the next 30 years.”

One of the long-term fasters, Jimmy Betts of Omaha, Nebraska will also speak.

BXE will end the fast at noon on Friday, September 25, with a ceremony that will include music, brief statements, and a procession to honor the Planet and the People featuring BXE’s colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, “The United States of Fracking,” around the FERC headquarters block. Five clergy members representing different faiths will present copies of the Pope’s encyclical to the five FERC commissioners.

Beyond Extreme Energy is an activist network of organizations and individuals that came together in 2014 to raise public awareness of the disastrous impacts of fracking, fracking infrastructure, proposed gas exports and other extreme energy extraction practices; to take direct action to stop them; and to promote an energy present and future of renewables and efficiency.

Break the #NoNewPermits #BXEfast & Deliver the Encyclical to FERC event on September 25, 2015 at NOON

from Ted Glick’s personal account:

I spoke to Norman Bay for several minutes today, Day 9 of the 18-day water-only Fast for No New Permits, on the sidewalk in front of FERC. I went up to him when he was seen leaving the building with an assistant. I introduced myself and walked next to him, asking if he would come down to receive the five copies of the Pope’s encyclical we will be bringing to FERC on September 25th at noon. He said he would consider it.

Then he stopped and we looked each other in the eye. He told me that he respected what we were doing with the fast and the commitment it showed as far as our beliefs. He said he felt this type of action was a good type of action.

However, he went on to say that he really had problems with us disrupting their monthly meetings and asked if we would stop doing that.

I responded: how can we do that when there’s no change at FERC as far as permitting gas pipelines and fracking infrastructure, one after the other, with virtually no exceptions.

His response: these are just pipelines. We’re a regulatory agency. Blaming us is like blaming the steel companies that make pipes. It’s the production of the gas that you need to deal with.

My response: how can you say you have no responsibility for the expansion of fracking? Without pipelines and infrastructure the fracked gas industry couldn’t be expanding and the gas wouldn’t be sent around the world. And you have a legal responsibility to do environmental impact statements and assessments which address the climate and environmental impacts. You also are supposed to be acting in the public interest, not the interests of the gas industry.

At that point, he checked out on the conversation, said something to the effect of “we should talk more,” and he headed off down the sidewalk.

The BXE fasters will discuss this new development and determine next steps.