Court Stops Natural Gas Pipeline Through Northeastern States

The E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse, which houses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Washington, on Jan. 9, 2024. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A federal appeals court has rejected the approval by a U.S. agency of a natural gas pipeline, halting the project.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s 2023 approval for the 36 miles of pipeline did not adequately take into account increased greenhouse gas emissions the project would generate, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled.

The commission estimated the project would generate an enormous amount of emissions, or GHG, for the next 50 years. “But it then walked away from the relevant issues with a fatalistic shrug, asserting that ‘it is unable to determine how individual projects will affect international, national, or statewide GHG emissions reduction targets or whether a project’s GHG emissions comply with those goals,’” U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs wrote in a 33-page ruling dated July 30.

When contemplating a proposed project, commissioners must also initially determine whether there is a market need for the project before it even turns to whether benefits outweigh likely risks.

The commission found a market need for the pipeline project, which would run through Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. But it acted arbitrarily in its approval because it did not respond to some challenges to that finding, Childs said.

The commission “failed to (1) explain why it entirely discredited the findings of two market studies showing that current capacity is sufficient to meet the New Jersey ratepayers’ natural gas demands beyond 2030; (2) explain how precedent agreements with local gas distribution companies ... provide assurance of market need if those same companies can pass on fixed pipeline construction costs to existing captive ratepayers while profitably selling any excess capacity to others, perhaps even at below-market prices; and (3) give weight to New Jersey state-law requirements of sizeable and continuous reductions to natural gas usage by public utilities, and instead described those requirements as unenforceable,” she wrote.

The unanimous ruling vacated the approval and remanded the project back to the commission for appropriate action.

The commission declined to comment.

The New Jersey Conservation Foundation, which brought the case, said the ruling “recognized the central role of state regulators and consumer advocates that do the hard work in making sure their own gas and energy needs are met with cost- and climate-effective solutions.”

A spokesperson for Williams, the company building the pipeline, told The Epoch Times in an email that the company thinks the decision is erroneous but that it will look to address concerns offered by the court “and to ensure that this much-needed firm transportation capacity continues to be available to serve the needs of our customers without interruption.”