FERC won’t be able to say it doesn’t know anything about LNG exports anymore, with this plan to require FERC environmental assessments before FE authorization. But this does nothing about the FE authorizations aleady granted, including the three at the end of the Transco -> Sabal -> FSC pipeline. A better idea: cancel LNG exports and build solar power instead.

Jennifer A. Dlouhy wrote for Fuelfix 30 May 2014, Winners and losers in feds’ new gas export review plan,

The Energy Department intends to scrap a two-year-old approach for considering applications to export LNG to countries that don’t have free trade agreements with the United States. Instead of reviewing them in the order they were filed, as the agency largely does now, the Energy Department would first tackle those that have already cleared an expensive, time-consuming environmental assessment typically done by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Sen. Ed Markey’s statement of 29 May 2014, Markey Commends DOE Move to Study Impacts of Large-scale Natural Gas Exports, heads in the right direction but doesn’t go far enough: Continue reading LNG export approval pause puts FERC on hook for EIAs →