Pipeline Update

KINDER MORGAN PRE-FILES WITH FERC FOR NORTHEAST ENERGY DIRECT

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 ROSE

Kinder Morgan applied for prefiling with FERC for the Northeast Energy Direct project on September 15.  Among the 24 files in their application are many new maps with much more information than they’ve been sharing up until now. Additional compressor stations are now confirmed to be slated for Canaan, NY, and in Conway and Townsend, MA. Meter stations are identified as well. Documents “Appendix D” to the application are classified as “privileged” information and subject to Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests. We’re working with MassPLANto find a way to obtain this information. If you have previous experience in this, please contact Katy at info@massplan.org.

We’re still processing all this information, but it’s now available for viewing on No Fracked Gas in Mass.
» TGP’s Northeast Energy Direct FERC documents
» County by County impacts drawn from TGP’s application
» Info on How to Use FERC’s website

All these sections will be growing and filling out over the next week or two as things progress and we learn more from the documents filed.

FERC’s comment period may not have started yet, so comments filed may not show up until then, but they are accepting comments if you feel the urge to file right away. We suggest looking over the application materials and getting a sense of the details of the project now available. See what other questions you have about the project and use your comments to ask FERC to demand answers to them.  Sending any letters you’ve written to elected officials or government agencies regarding this project is another approach.

Sec. of Energy & Environmenal Affairs, Maeve Vallely Bartlett already wrote a fantastic response, if you’re looking for inspiration.

This is just the beginning of the FERC process. There will be Open House meetings with Kinder Morgan in each affected town and “Scoping Meetings” with FERC officials in each affected town. After a period of review, Kinder Morgan / TGP will then file their formal application. This allows another comment period and also the ability to register as an intervenor

This is the start of a long process ~ More to come!

**************************************************

KINDER MORGAN PIPELINE: WHOSE NEED? WHOSE CONVENIENCE?

Katy Eiseman, September 15, 2014

What have we learned since January, when landowners across Massachusetts started receiving knocks on their doors from Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline land agents with requests to survey land?

Affected landowners, concerned citizens, nonprofits and officials at all levels of government have networked with allies across the Northeast, piecing together a picture of just what Kinder Morgan is after when the company seeks survey permission from landowners. Kinder Morgan most immediately wants information it can use to convince federal regulators that its proposed Northeast Energy Direct project deserves a “certificate of public convenience and necessity”.

Such a certificate, if granted, would allow Kinder Morgan to take property by eminent domain from hundreds of landowners in at least four states – Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and possibly Connecticut – so that a pipeline can be built to connect Marcellus shale gas directly to the existing Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, which runs to Nova Scotia where export projects are underway.

Kinder Morgan’s Public Affairs vice president, Allen Fore, has recently stated that the notion that gas through the Kinder Morgan pipeline would be exported overseas is “pure speculation”. And yet, a Canadian energy company proudly states on its website: “The Goldboro LNG project … will be located at the Goldboro Industrial Park in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The natural gas supply feeding the project is to be delivered via the existing Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, located directly adjacent to the project. The target markets for the LNG produced at the Goldboro LNG project are Europe, South America and Asia.” The website also makes clear that the driving force behind the push to export is the newly available and currently cheap Marcellus shale gas in Pennsylvania.

Houston-based Kinder Morgan, with approximately 80,000 miles of pipeline across North America, wants us to believe that this proposed pipeline would bring lower energy prices to New England. As pointed out by U.S. Senator Ed Markey this June, the total amount of natural gas approved by the U.S. Department of Energy for export since May of 2011 already “has far exceeded the level that DOE’s own study said would increase domestic natural gas prices by more than 50 percent.”

Many of us have seen Kinder Morgan’s presentations at select board meetings across the state. They speak of “need” with a strong sales pitch, but their corporate need – to move as much gas through their system as possible – is at odds with local needs and sensibilities (or “convenience”, to use the term that FERC considers). The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources is undertaking a study this fall to determine “whether or not new infrastructure is required, and if so, how to optimize for environmental, reliability, and cost considerations.” In other words, our state government has committed to looking for better ways to meet our energy needs than clear-cutting a hundred-foot-wide swath across our Commonwealth, through hundreds of private properties and public lands, many of which are protected from development under our state constitution. The state is providing an opportunity for public input in this “low-demand scenario” study, which will look at demand-side solutions such as energy efficiency programs, in addition to supply-side options including small- and large-scale renewable projects.

Meanwhile, with Kinder Morgan’s commencement of proceedings at FERC, a new round of corporate presentations, called “open houses,” will begin late this fall as an official part of the FERC process. This will be followed early next year by FERC “scoping hearings,” wherein the public has the opportunity to raise questions to help ensure a rigorous environmental impact analysis is undertaken. Such an analysis should examine not just less damaging routes, but also examine the “need” for the pipeline by analyzing less damaging energy solutions from a greenhouse gas perspective, as the Patrick administration has committed to examine in its study mentioned above.

An engaged and informed public can make a difference in the outcome, and we don’t have to wait for FERC’s formal processes to unfold in order to act. Landowners who have granted permission to survey for the pipeline can revoke that permission at any time, and many have. Kinder Morgan has been denied access to survey town-owned land in at least twelve municipalities, and, at last count, the company had survey permission from fewer than half of the landowners in its sights. Along with dozens of advocacy groups, land trusts and other organizations across the state, over 30 municipalities have voted in opposition to the project – many of them not along the proposed route, seeing this project as the wrong direction for our energy infrastructure. In a recent effort in Middlesex County, over 100 locally-owned businesses joined in the effort to oppose the pipeline. Similar campaigns will be underway soon in western Mass.

Kinder Morgan has been taken by surprise by the opposition it has met here. Winchendon’s local paper reports that a company representative lamented to the town manager, “We let them get ahead of us.” In other parts of the country, opposition often hasn’t even formed until after the company gets to FERC. Here, we have already had part of our Congressional delegation and a growing number of state legislators come out against the proposal, the Governor has expressed “skepticism” about the project, and in July, we had a statewide pipeline resistance march and rally in Boston.

All that was just the warm-up phase. Some among the opposition have observed that, by seeking to cut across northern Massachusetts, Kinder Morgan has chosen “the path of most resistance.” “Don’t Mess with Texas” is meeting the modern-day Shays’ Rebellion.

*No Fracked Gas in Mass is a member organization of MassPLAN.org