Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS -- (Senate - April 04, 2008)

By Mr. WYDEN (for himself, Mrs. CLINTON, Mr. LIEBERMAN, and Mr. DODD):

S. 2822. A bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to repeal a section of that Act relating to exportation or importation of natural gas; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, along with Senator CLINTON, Senator LIEBERMAN, and Senator DODD, I am introducing legislation that will correct a fundamental wrong perpetrated in the 2005 that allowed Federal bureaucracy to override local control by placing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the primary role of siting Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, terminals. That action, taken in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, took what had historically always been a state government responsibility--the permitting of LNG storage terminals--and handed it off to a Federal agency in Washington, DC--FERC.

At the time, 45 Senators went on record saying that cutting State siting agencies out of the LNG siting process was a bad idea and the history of FERC's actions since then have borne us out.

Right now, in Oregon, we have three separate LNG proposals pending before FERC. Together, they would have a combined capacity of 3.3 billion cubic feet, BCF, of gas per day. Oregon and Washington, together, only use 1.33 BCF per day. Yet, FERC categorically refuses to address the basic question of whether the three proposed facilities are even needed to serve our market. FERC also refuses to consider whether any of the three publicly announced interstate pipeline proposals to bring natural gas to Oregon from the Rocky Mountains would be a better option. In fact, FERC asserts that it's not its job to determine which, if any, of these proposals best serves our market. FERC also asserts that it has no obligation to determine which of these proposals--and the hundreds of miles of pipelines that would cut through forest lands, farms, vineyards, and residential neighborhoods to connect them to the interstate pipeline system--has the least environmental impact to our State and our citizens' private property.

To make matters worse, FERC's insistence that each of these projects is a separate, unrelated project has produced a bureaucratic nightmare of competing public meetings, scoping hearings, and filing requirements for each project. Letters from local officials to FERC asking legitimate questions about impacts on local land use don't get answered. They simply get filed, because that's what the FERC process is set up to do--to process paper and not address real concerns.

The end result is a public process in which the public has no due process and no assurance that their concerns will be heard, much less addressed.

At every turn, FERC's LNG siting process in Oregon has defied common sense and public accountability. It is a process divorced from the real world questions that need to be answered. The situation in other parts of the country is no different.

It's time to restore the local and State role in these critical decisions about in whose backyard a pipeline or LNG plant will be built. It is time to reverse the ill-considered decision Congress made in 2005 when it overrode State and local decision-making to put a Federal bureaucracy in charge of LNG siting authority. This bill would do exactly that.

I am pleased that Senator CLINTON is joining me in sponsoring this important legislation to give States and local communities a say in where LNG facilities and pipelines should be built. I urge colleagues to join me in sponsoring the bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the RECORD.

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