In July 2024, Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) began larger replacement construction of its pipeline compressors in Starbuck, Walla Walla County, Washington, and Kent, Sherman County, Oregon, near Bend, for its GTN Xpress pipeline expansion moving increased methane volumes and pressures through its dangerously corroded (according to whistleblowing inspectors), 63-year pipeline across north Idaho, eastern Washington, and central Oregon.  During the same month, it started pumping one third of its expansion capacity, 50 million of 150 million cubic feet of additional gas per day.  GTN finished Kent compressor “auxiliary facilities” and obtained Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) permission to bring them online for existing GTN volumes on November 22.  On December 2, GTN requested FERC approval to start using the full capacity of the upgraded GTN Xpress pipeline on Wednesday, December 11.  FERC predictably granted entire GTN Xpress start-up on Thursday, December 12, as Starbuck compressor installation and site restoration neared completion.

Meanwhile, the fate of GTN Xpress remains unresolved by litigation in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in oil industry friendly Texas.  Among case opening briefs filed on October 28, GTN complains that its replacement facilities did not garner the usual FERC predetermination of “rolled-in rates” afforded similar projects.  These rates allow gas shippers to pass the costs of their expansions onto all regional utility customers, whether they receive the extra methane or not.  Stop GTN Xpress coalition member groups Columbia Riverkeeper and Rogue Climate assert that FERC violated federal laws by refusing to consider a “no action” alternative to GTN Xpress, by segmenting its administrative review, and by failing to disclose the safety risks of pipeline expansion.  And state attorneys general of Washington and Oregon argue that FERC excluded compressor upgrade expenses from GTN Xpress costs and relied on unexplained public benefits and GTN agreements with utilities to falsely predict future gas demand, causing consumers to bear pipeline expansion costs for several decades.

Despite GTN discovering pipeline anomalies in November, which reduced flows in north Idaho, GTN Xpress started pushing extra methane this week.  Fracked gas infrastructure expansions like GTN Xpress jeopardize the health, safety, and lands of not only concerned Northwest communities, but also the people and places around source gas wells and pipelines in western Canada.  All these facilities inflict public and environmental harms, pollute shared global air and water, worsen climate change, risk explosive ruptures and fires, and force energy users into decades of fossil fuels dependence.  Clean, renewable energy offers less expensive and hazardous options that create sustainable jobs and a healthier future.

In response to reckless GTN Xpress approval and start-up, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and appreciated allies Extinction Rebellion (XR) Palouse, Spokane Veterans for Peace Chapter 35, and visiting climate activists invite you to join in rejecting Northwest fossil fuels expansions, by participating in a week of protests at GTN’s parent company, TC Energy, the two gas utilities receiving GTN Xpress methane, and other locations in five inland Northwest cities along and beyond the pipeline route: Continue reading →

Regional, volunteer, climate activists collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), Veterans for Peace Spokane Chapter 35, and allied organizations invite the inland Northwest and especially Idaho community to again respond with public, forceful concern to the climate-wrecking, federally enforced, fossil fuel industry threat of the Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) Xpress fracked methane gas pipeline expansion.  In Boise, Moscow, and Sandpoint, Idaho, and Kennewick and Spokane, Washington, in mid-May, we propose another week of not only demonstrations, similar to two previous endeavors, but also local presentations offered to describe two-plus years of ongoing, Northwest resistance to GTN Xpress and to consider direct actions against impending construction of compressor stations [1-3].

So many destructive fossil fuels and highway expansion projects have received permits or concluded construction during this last year, such as the Highway 95 reroute on Paradise Ridge near Moscow, the Coastal GasLink pipeline through unceded, Wet’suwet’en, indigenous territory in British Columbia, the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline expansion across western Canada, and now GTN Xpress.  Despite the annual, privileged polluter panaceas of Earth Day, this increasingly unbreathable, unlivable planet needs all “hands on deck” and “boots on the ground” to stop the climate hell imposed by our industrialized life ways.

Please join with us and learn about the growing campaign to prevent plans by TC Energy, GTN, Cascade Natural Gas, Intermountain Gas, and other utilities, to push unneeded methane through aging, unsafe, GTN infrastructure and connected pipelines across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.  We gratefully welcome your participation, strategy ideas, and responses in-person and/or via phone, text, or email, as we coordinate these upcoming events and provide a slide show, banner, and T-shirts.  Organizers also ask that you print, post, and share this announcement and flyer and bring protest signs, friends, and family to these public gatherings and discussions.

Saturday, May 11, Moscow, Idaho

Protest & Outreach: 10 am to 1 pm Moscow Farmers Market, Friendship Square, 400 S. Main Street

Talk: 6 to 8 pm The Attic, 314 E. Second Street (rear stairs)

Monday, May 13, Boise, Idaho

Protest: 3 to 5 pm Intermountain Gas, 555 S. Cole Road

Talk: 6 to 8 pm Boise Downtown Public Library, William Hayes Memorial Auditorium (first floor), 715 S. Capitol Boulevard

Tuesday, May 14, Kennewick, Washington

Protest: 3 to 5 pm Cascade Natural Gas, 8113 W. Grandridge Boulevard

Talk: 6 to 8 pm Mid-Columbia Library, conference room (first door on right), 1620 S. Union Street

Thursday, May 16, Spokane, Washington

Protest: 3 to 5 pm TC Energy, 201 W. North River Drive, Suite 505

Talk: 6 to 8 pm Liberty Park United Methodist Church, social hall, 1526 E. 11th Avenue

Friday, May 17, Sandpoint, Idaho

Talk: 3 to 5 pm East Bonner County Library, Community Room B, 1407 Cedar Street

Saturday, May 18, Sandpoint, Idaho

Protest & Outreach: 9 am to 1 pm Farmers’ Market at Sandpoint, Farmin Park, 301 Oak Street

Issue Updates

On the morning of April 16, 2024, Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN), a subsidiary of Keystone and Keystone XL tar sands pipelines owner TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), for a prompt decision allowing construction to proceed at three Northwest compressor stations, to increase the gas capacity of the GTN Xpress fracked methane pipeline, FERC docket CP22-2 [4].  Also on April 16, in another probably industry-ghostwritten comment to FERC, Idaho Congressional members urged the commission to approve construction of this Canadian fossil fuels invasion “bringing more supply to the communities that the pipeline safely serves” [5]. Continue reading →

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 →

Along with Inland Northwest GTN Xpress Weeks of Actions in Athol, Boise, Moscow, and Sandpoint, Idaho, and Kennewick and Spokane, Washington, on October 28 to November 10, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists and allies encourage you to attend this GTN Xpress pipeline corridor community safety vigil on Sunday evening, November 5 [1, 2].

Forwarded message:

Dear colleagues and friends,

You are invited to a vigil to respond to the recent, disappointing news that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has green-lighted the GTN Xpress fracked gas pipeline expansion project.  Here are the details, and attached is a flyer, which you are welcome to pass along to those who would be interested.

Vigil for Community Safety Against Approved Pipeline Expansion of Gas Transmission Northwest Xpress

Sunday, November 5, 2023, 4:30-5:30 pm*

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 316 East 24th Avenue, Spokane

*Please note that this will be an outdoor event on the day when clocks change from daylight savings to standard time.  For more information, please see our website, the Seattle Times, and Columbia Riverkeeper [3-5].

The vigil is co-sponsored by these organizations: Continue reading →