FERC Chairman Details Position on Natural Gas Pipelines

By Maddy McCarty, PG&J Digital Editor

FERC Chairman Richard Glick does not want his intentions to review natural gas pipelines more thoroughly to be interpreted as him opposing gas pipelines altogether, he said during the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference.

FERC Chairman Richard Glick, right, clarified his position on natural gas pipelines during the CERAWeek conference.
FERC Chairman Richard Glick, right, clarified his position on natural gas pipelines during the CERAWeek conference.

As reported by Natural Gas Intelligence, Glick, a Democrat promoted to chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by the Biden administration, said wanting to review the environmental impact of a project does not mean he is against it.

“What I’ve been concerned about is that I read quite frequently that people say ‘Commissioner Glick is against pipelines’ because I’ve dissented on those cases in which we didn’t look at the greenhouse gas implications of a pipeline project,” Glick said at last week’s conference, according to NGI. “That just simply isn’t true.”

Glick also said at the virtually held conference that the FERC is going to review the deadly Texas power shortage that left millions without power amid freezing temperatures, which also froze or cut off power to pipelines and heavily affected crude oil and natural gas operations. FERC issued a report after a Texas winter freeze in 2011, he said in a video shared by CERAWeek.

“I’m hoping that we’ll have a report by the end of the summer,” Glick said in the video. “But I’m making a commitment that we’re not just going to let this be a report that sits on the shelf. If it recommends action, we’re going to take action.”
He noted the 2011 report recommendations became guidance and in a competitive market like Texas, generating facilities were not likely to voluntarily follow the guidance to weatherize if competing facilities did not do the same.

In February under Glick’s leadership, FERC said it would reevaluate the 1999 policy statement covering the process for certificating natural gas pipelines. The chairman has intentions of quantifying anticipated greenhouse gas emissions and implementing mitigation measures accordingly, NGI reported.

Those emissions could be offset by things such as renewable energy credits or methane emissions reductions, NGI reported Glick said.

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