FERC chair seeks consensus on new pipeline policy
The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will try to find a way to move forward with a stalled update to a decades-old policy for permitting natural gas infrastructure, the agency's new acting chairman said.
FERC needs to move forward with a pipeline policy "that has stakeholder buy-in," that is sustainable and that will allow for the approval of projects needed for the reliability of the natural gas delivery system, chairman Willie Phillips said. President Joe Biden named Phillips as acting chairman on 3 January, making him the first Black chairman to lead the agency.
"I think it is important to have durable policies come out, so I am focused on working with our colleagues to build consensus," Phillips said after his first FERC meeting serving as acting chairman.
FERC last updated its permitting policy in 1999, a decade before the shale boom fueled a massive buildout of gas infrastructure and a corresponding blowback from landowners and environmentalists. The agency first started reconsidering the policy in 2018, under a Republican chairman, but the measure stalled.
