On October 19, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) Xpress expansion of an unsafe, potentially explosive, six-decade-plus, methane (“natural” gas) pipeline across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon to California [1-7]. The Calgary, Alberta-based, Canadian owner of the rejected Keystone XL and rupture-prone Keystone tar sands pipelines in the Great Plains and the fiery Columbia Gas Transmission line in the northeast U.S., TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) proposes to increase the pump pressures of three compressor stations in Athol, Idaho, Starbuck, Washington, and Kent, Oregon, and push an additional 150 million cubic feet per day of unneeded, fracked gas volumes through the almost 1,400-mile-long GTN line from Eastport, Idaho, to Malin, Oregon, suspiciously the origin point of the defeated Pacific Connector gas pipeline to the also vanquished Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal planned for Coos Bay, Oregon [8, 9].
The bi-directional Williams Northwest gas line would carry over half (79 million cubic feet per day) of GTN Xpress methane from the GTN-Northwest juncture near the Columbia River at Stanfield, Oregon, to the Boise metropolitan area and southern Idaho. Cascade Natural Gas based in Kennewick, Washington, and Intermountain Gas headquartered in Boise signed precedent agreements for their utility companies to receive and distribute GTN Xpress gas. Not coincidentally, Intermountain has concurrently applied to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission for customer rate increases, contested by the city of Boise and Idaho Conservation League, likely to pass the costs of excess GTN methane on to Idaho consumers.
After rubber stamping 423 of 425 pipeline applications as standard practice during the last two decades, FERC published a 79-page order issuing a certificate of public convenience and necessity for GTN Xpress, including statements from commissioners Clements and Danly both partially concurring and dissenting with the decision [10, 11]. This outcome ignored Northwest concerns about the lack of gas demand and the climate, health, and safety impacts of the expansion (addressed in an upcoming action alert), neglected proper tribal consultation, despite extensive comments to FERC from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and dismissed unprecedented community, tribal, and state and federal government resistance to this scheme clearly driven by industry profits from increasingly stranded fossil fuels assets.
Columbia Riverkeeper and Rogue Climate, accepted intervenors in this quasi-judicial, FERC case deliberating whether GTN Xpress methane is both necessary and in the public interest, will challenge this reckless decision, by petitioning FERC before November 22, to withdraw its GTN Xpress order and/or hold a formal rehearing. Through their first of several filings, since the public comment period on the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for GTN Xpress in summer 2022, all three West Coast attorneys general requested belated intervenor status after the February 2022 deadline. The Stop GTN Xpress coalition is encouraging the states of Washington, Oregon, and California, who urged FERC to reject this project, to also ask FERC for a rehearing. As the Northwest continues to hold FERC, TC Energy, and GTN accountable for exacerbated climate change and environmental injustices, FERC can grant, deny, or ignore these petitions within 30 days of their filing, and compressor station upgrades and construction could begin in January 2024.
Besides thousands of Northwest citizens and a broad coalition of dozens of regional and nationwide, indigenous, environmental, health, and faith advocacy groups, numerous elected officials have voiced objections to GTN Xpress, including U.S. senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington, and Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla of California, U.S. Congressional members Earl Blumenauer and Andrea Salinas of Oregon, Washington governor Jay Inslee, Oregon governor Tina Kotek, attorneys general Rob Bonta of California, Bob Ferguson of Washington, and Ellen Rosenblum of Oregon, and four Oregon and Washington state representatives.
Inland Northwest GTN Xpress Weeks of Actions Continue reading
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 