How can FERC justify LNG export as a public benefit, when it’s not listed in FERC’s own Factors to Balance in Assessing Public Convenience and Necessity?

Fracked methane pipelines are driven by surplus “natural” gas produced by the “shale gas revolution”: fracking. Other countries would pay the highest prices for that gas, so many of those pipelines are for LNG export, probably including the Sabal Trail pipeline, considering three four companies already have LNG export authorization right at the end of the Transco – Sabal Trail – Florida Southeast Connection chain in Florida, and another one Strom, has applied to FE and FERC and been approved by FE, plus maybe definitely TECO (Tampa Energy) in cahoots with Kinder Morgan (KMI), so that makes five approved in Florida. Plus fossil fuel companies want to export LNG from Texas and Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.

You can’t follow all this without knowing about the The LNG export shell game: FERC, FE, MARAD, or NEB?

Current Free Trade Area (FTA) LNG export authorizations would be made even worse by the Trans-Pacific Parternership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), also known as the Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA). And the U.S. House of Representatives has before it a bill to authorize LNG exports to all 159 WTO countries. Spectra Energy expects to export to profit by those higher prices in other countries at our expense right here at home. There’s no excuse for that when we can get on with solar power. Let’s stop this LNG export nonsense!

New LNG export articles should appear here.

Spectra Expects

• Spectra CEO expects to export fracked gas,

  “Our pipelines go right by all those facilities, really. You’ll probably see three to six of those get built. I would expect we’ll have some involvement in all of them.”

  —Greg Ebel, CEO, Spectra Energy
• Spectra CEO Greg Ebel excuses for lack of methane pipeline delivery,

  The industry is planning several terminals to export natural gas to customers in Asia and Europe, where gas remains much more expensive than in the U.S. The terminals will be built where pipeline constraints are not a problem, but the terminals approved by the Energy Department so far would increase demand by 13 percent.

  —Jonathan Fahey, AP, 10 March 2014.

  “It’s a question of getting to market,” said Greg Ebel, CEO of Spectra Energy, a pipeline company that moves one-fifth of the gas used in the U.S. every day. “How are we going to actually deliver the supply needed, that’s a real challenge for us.”

U.S. DoE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)

• 2014-03-25: New pipelines are for fracking and LNG export —FE chief Paula Gant to Congress,

  Today, domestic natural gas prices are lower than international prices of delivered LNG to overseas markets. As in the United States, demand for natural gas is growing rapidly in foreign markets. Due primarily to these developments, DOE has received a growing number of applications to export domestically produced natural gas to overseas markets in the form of LNG.

• Authority to Import and Export Gas by U.S. Department of Energy,

  The Office of Fossil Energy (FE) of the Department of Energy gives notice that during March 2013, it issued orders granting authority to import and export natural gas and liquefied natural gas and vacating prior authority. These orders are summarized in the attached appendix and may be found on the FE Web site at http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/gasregulation/authorizations/Orders-2012.html.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

• LNG export approval pause puts FERC on hook for EIAs

  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.

• The Halliburton fracking Loophole and LNG exports

  How about we also repeal the Halliburton Loophole in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPA2005) that enables fracking and LNG exports?

  The Office of Fossil Energy (FE)’s parent U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)’s writeup on EPA2005 doesn’t mention its fracking effects or liquid natural gas (LNG) storage or export. FERC’s writeup spells out that EPA2005 not just enabled but required LNG export:

Approved and Proposed

LNG export approved and proposed:

How big is the LNG export gold rush? Here are maps of dozens of approved, proposed, and potential LNG export terminals, one of them even including Carib’s FE-authorized Martin County LNG export facility that FERC never seems to remember and Sabal Trail never talks about.

LNG Export from Florida

Crowley Maritime’s Carib Energy

• Approved 27 July 2011: JAX-based Crowley authorized to export LNG from Martin County, Florida

  Why didn’t FERC or Sabal Trail or FPL or Williams tell us about LNG export to FTA countries authorized by FE in 2011, before Sabal Trail and the others even submitted their pre-filing applications to FERC?

  • 2017-07-27: Carib Energy FTA LNG export DOE/FE Order No. 2993 for FE Docket No. 11-71-LNG.
  • Non-FTA application: Carib-Crowley LNG export from Martin County, FL
    FE Docket 11-141-LNG
  • 2014-09-10: Non-FTA Crowley Maritime Carib Energy LNG export DOE/FE Order No. 3487 for FE Docket 11-141-LNG.
• LNG export port at Jacksonville?

  Why are Jaxport tenants buying LNG ships and a company that already has an LNG export license? And why is Jaxport so interested in becoming a major player in natural gas? All reports agree this liquid natural gas (LNG) facility is for supplying methane-fueled trucks and buses, and some say its gas will come from a pipeline. But are trucks and buses really the only destination for that pipelined gas, or is it also intended for export, as the U.S. House subcommittee chaired by Ted Poe of Houston (home of Spectra Energy) recently advocated at great length?

• I’d go ahead and let the gas go into the global market. —T. Boone Pickens

  The co-founder of the company building the LNG facility at Jaxport is all for exporting natural gas, even if it means rising domestic prices.

  “The producers have gone out and drilled for the natural gas. They should be entitled to get the best markets in the world, so let them have it,” the chairman of BP Capital Management and proponent of natural gas told “Squawk on the Street.”

  “Go ahead and move it out and sell it,” he said. “I’d go ahead and let the gas go into the global market.”

  When asked about the response of U.S. companies, such as the private firm Koch Industries, to the prospect of rising natural gas prices, Pickens said they had already benefited from cheap natural gas.

  “That’s fine—that’s America, and that’s the way it should be,” he said. “But they should allow the producers to export if they want to export.”

  Koch answered:

  “We agree with Mr. Pickens’ position on exports—to be clear, we are fully in favor of the freedom to export LNG.”

  —Koch Industries

Floridian LNG (FLiNG)

• Approved 14 November 2013: Floridian LNG Export approved last November, before Sabal Trail Open Houses or FERC Scoping Meetings

  On 14 November 2013 the U.S. DoE’s Office of Fossil Energy approved LNG export authority for a company located next to the end of the Transco-Sabal Trail-FSC pipeline in Martin County, Florida, right where FPL is already building another pipeline to the sea. All the time since then Spectra and FERC have been saying the Sabal Trail pipeline is not for export. FERC’s whole rationale for federal eminent domain for this pipeline is that Florida needs the power. If the methane is really for export, what excuse is there for federal eminent domain?

  
  14 November 2013 DOE/FE Order No. 3360 for FE docket No. 13-104-LNG.
  • Florida LNG Company FLiNG “expects to quadruple its LNG capacity in the first quarter of 2016.”

    In collaboration with its partners in Indiantown, FLiNG expects to quadruple its LNG capacity in the first quarter of 2016.

  Where are Floridian LNG and FLiNG Energy?

  Where is FLiNG Energy and its “partners in Indiantown” that it expects to help it quadruple its LNG capacity in the first quarter of 2016? All along FPL’s pipeline to the sea, and PCBs, too. So convenient for LNG export from the proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline!

FECR

• 2015-12-10: Florida East Coast Railway plans and Fortress Investment Group already has U.S. DoE Office of Fossil Fuels (FE) authorization to pick up LNG from FliNG in Martin County and ship it up and down the Florida coast to Miami and Jacksonville. Plus FE authorized the LNG to be exported to all free trade countries. And FECR doesn’t plan to stop there.

AES

• 2013-11-14: DOE/FE Order No. 3360
• AES Port of Palm Beach LNG export at end of Transco → Sabal Trail → FSC pipeline chain

Goven

• Approved 12 December 2013: Goven: Florida Company gets LNG Export Rights — where do you think they’ll be getting all that gas from?

  Goven, a Miami based company, will be exporting LNG after the Dept of Energy granted them a permit. They claim no new facillites will be needed…

  
  12 December 2013 DOE/FE Order No. 3371 for FE Docket No. 13-122-LNG.

Port Dolphin

• Port Dolphin off Tampa already approved by FERC for LNG import

  Offshore deepwater LNG import project Port Dolphin was approved by FERC in 2009, despite interventions by a long list of other pipeline companies, FPL, and other entities. FERC granted Port Dolphin permission to interconnect with Gulfstream and Florida Gas Transmission, the two pipelines FPL requires Sabal Trail to connect to. What if Port Dolphin files to export LNG, as so many other import-permitted projects are doing?

  
  3 December 2009 129 FERC 61,199

AES Ocean Express pipeline to the Bahamas

• AES Ocean Express pipeline from Florida to Bahamas

  An undersea pipeline originally for import to Florida, now being promoted for LNG export because of U.S. surplus methane from fracking, already approved by the U.S. a decade ago, only waiting for approval by the Bahamas, which is being pressured by an international bank to do so. It would run from FPL’s Port Everglades “Clean Energy Center” in Broward County, a location linked since it was announced with FPL’s Florida Southeast Connection, which would get its gas from the Sabal Trail and Transco pipelines, starting with fracking in Pennsylvania and Texas.

Florida opposition

• 2014-05-04: FPL’s hometown newspaper about Sabal Trail pipeline opposition

  The Palm Beach Post is located 15 miles from FPL’s headquarters in Juno Beach, and right at the end of the extra pipeline FPL built from the end of the Transco -> Sabal -> FSC pipeline the last few miles to the sea, which would make LNG export even more convenient.

• 2014-04-21: Questions from SpectraBusters, Inc. to FERC

  

  12. Given that at least two companies have LNG export authorizations from U.S. DoE’s Office of Fossil Energy from Martin County, Florida, exactly at the end of the three-part Transco, Sabal Trail, FSC pipeline, how much of the methane through that pipeline is intended for export, rather than for use within Florida?
  13. Why, even after repeated questions over many months by many people in many locations as to whether the pipeline was to provide natural gas for export, has neither Spectra nor FERC answered with any information about these LNG export authorizations?
  14. If the gas through the Sabal Trail pipeline is intended for export by the end users, how can federal eminent domain apply for the pipeline?

• 2014-04-11: Does FERC ever question the honesty and integrity of companies such as Sabal? —Sandra Slack,

  While a storage facility would complement and enhance the two existing pipelines and make a 3RD pipeline unnecessary, such a facility can also be used for exports of natural gas, hence Spectra/NextEra/Sabal Trail. Spectra/NextEra (the shippers) will probably supply FPL with a small capacity of natural gas (to justify the pipeline) but there is a larger picture. Large trucks and trains can take ISO containers to these facilities to be filled and then taken to a port by truck or by train to be shipped overseas.

Strom, Inc.

• 2014-03-24: A fourth Florida LNG export request: Strom, Inc. from Starke, FL

  Still time to object to this fourth company filing to export Sabal Trail fracked methane, adding to the three already authorized. FERC knew about this Strom LNG export request before the last three FERC Scoping Meetings, and never told us. This fourth LNG export operation will affect both the Santa Fe River watershed and the St Johns River watershed.

• 2014-08-14: LNG export proposed from Suwannee and St Johns River Watersheds

  St. Johns Riverkeeper should also beware. Strom’s Starke, FL location is also right on the divide beyond which water flows to the Atlantic past Jacksonville in the Lower St. Johns River Watershed. Specifically, it’s only about 20 miles from North Fork Black Creek, which flows into the St Johns River. Given that one of the already-permitted LNG export companies is Crowley Maritime’s Carib Energy, based in Jacksonville, and Jaxport is gearing up for LNG export, it’s safe to assume trucks or trains with LNG will be passing through the Lower St. Johns River Watershed on their way to Jacksonville.

• 2014-08-22: FERC dismissed Strom Starke LNG for lack of fee payment,

  One thing up with which even FERC will not put is a late filing fee! FERC warned Strom about that $24,260 filing fee on 21 July 2014. One month and one day later, FERC called the whole thing off. But don’t assume that means Strom is giving up: it may be back with another try for Starke, in Bradford County, Florida, in the Santa Fe River watershed and a short truck drive to the St Johns River watershed. And remember three other Florida LNG export operations already have authorization from DoE’s Office of Fossil Energy.

• 2014-09-29: Strom asks FE to move LNG export application location,

  Dismissed by FERC for lack of payment? No worries, Strom, Inc.’s other LNG export application with the FE is still active, and Strom asked to move the location, too, to Crystal River. Just east on Power Line Road from Duke Energy’s permantly-closed Crystal River nuke and proposed new gas plant. Strom says it would get the fracked methane from either FGT or Sabal Trail, which is either an intrastate or an interstate pipeline depending on which of Strom’s sentences you believe. No, Strom’s CEO’s name is not Loki; it’s just pronounced that way, and spelled Lokey.

• 2014-10-21: Strom Crystal River LNG export approval, rubberstamped by DoE Office of Fossil Energy, and setting up to ramp up without any further approval by anybody.
• 2015-05-15: Strom Submits App to DOE to Process, Transport Interstate, & Export Fracked Gas VIA Sabal Trail Pipeline

TECO (Tampa Energy) LNG export

• 2015-05-07: Kinder Morgan FERC filing to ship fracked methane to Jacksonville
• 2014-10-18: Sabal Trail to TECO to Jaxport for LNG export?

  Marcellus Shale fracked methane through Atlantic Sunrise to Transco to Sabal Trail to TECO to Jaxport for LNG export? And maybe an explanation for why Sempra Energy, like Spectra Energy, donated to both GA Gov. Nathan Deal’s and AL Gov. Robert Bentley’s re-election campaigns. Sempra apparently wants to export Marcellus Shale gas from Jacksonville, and Sabal Trail is the proposed conduit for that through Alabama and Georgia to Florida.

LNG Export from Georgia

• Elba Island, GA, LNG Export
  • Docket Number PF13-3 for Southern LNG Company, L.L.C. for the Elba Liquefaction and EEC Expansion Projects.
  • 2014-04-03: Notice of Elba Express Company, L.L.C’s 3/21/14 filing of an application to add north-to-south transportation capacity to the existing EEC pipeline system by constructing & operating additional compression at Hartwell Compressor Station, CP14-115 et al..
  • 2014-04-03: formal application for an export permit: Notice of Elba Liquefaction Company, L.L.C’s et al March 10, 2014 application requesting authorization to construct and operate its Elba Liquefaction Project under CP14-103 et al.
  • 2014-05-03: Elba Island contractor donated to Georgia governor’s re-election campaign.

LNG Export from Maryland

• 2014-05-04: FERC hearing packed by activists,

  Ted Glick, coordinator for Cheseapeake Climate Action Network, one of the main groups fighting the Cove Point LNG export terminal in Maryland, said, “FERC has got to be starting to wonder what more our movement is going to come after them with, or maybe they know: July 13th, when thousands of us will march from Capitol Hill to the FERC headquarters, and the next day, July 14th, when many of us will risk arrest, underlining the urgency of our call for FERC to start protecting the public interest instead of the interests of the oil and gas industry.”

• 2014-07-13: March on FERC against Cove Point LNG exports 2014-07-13.
• 2014-09-29: FERC authorized Cove Point LNG export in Maryland.

LNG Export from Massachusetts

• How long until Excelerate files for LNG export from Massachusetts Bay?

  How long until the same company that already got FE authorization for LNG export from Texas files for the same from its idle LNG facility offshore from Boston?

LNG Export from Oregon

• Williams Co’s WEP pipeline anchor customer is Oregon LNG for export, detailing how Spectra Energy’s British Columbia pipeline connects to Williams Company’s Washington Expansion Project (WEP) which goes to:

  Oregon LNG is the anchor customer requesting 750 MDth/d of incremental transportation to serve their proposed LNG export terminal

  Jordan Cove

  Project Sponsor: Veresen
  Suppliers: Unknown — Discussions with Rockies/Canadian suppliers
  Market: 6 parties representing various free trade and non free trade countries have officially expressed interest

LNG export from British Columbia

• 2014-04-06: Spectra and TransCanada competing in LNG export in British Columbia

  TransCanada, of the notorious Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, is also competing with Spectra Energy for fracked methane export through an LNG export terminal on the British Columbia coast, and Spectra just got another approval for its “corridor” for not one but two giant pipelines to the Pacific Ocean.

• 2014-03-25: Spectra submitted EA to BC for 2 pipelines to LNG export

  Not one, but up to two pipelines for LNG export in a single “transportation corridor” in British Columbia, for 8.4 billion cubic feet per day in a single right of way, twice as much as earlier Spectra PR about this same project. Does anybody still doubt Spectra CEO Greg Ebel’s assertion that “I would expect we’ll have some involvement in all of” the North American LNG export terminals that Spectra’s pipelines “go right by”? And if Spectra wants to put two pipelines in that right of way in BC, what do they expect to do in the right of way they propose through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida? Sure, they haven’t said they want to do that here, but they didn’t say it about BC at this stage, either. Spectra thanks the aborigines of BC for sharing their objections and plows ahead anyway. We are all Indians to Spectra’s cowboys, but this time there are more of us.

• 2013-11-29: Cnooc Seeks to Ship LNG from Canada’s Pacific Coast, by Chester Dawson for WSJ,

  The Canadian unit of Chinese state-owned energy company Cnooc Ltd. 0883.HK -1.26% applied with federal regulators on Friday for permission to export liquefied natural gas from Canada’s Pacific coast.

  The application with the National Energy Board for a 25-year permit comes just two weeks after the Cnooc unit and its partners won rights from the provincial government of British Columbia to build an LNG terminal close to its border with Alaska. Known as Aurora LNG, the project is one of nearly a dozen in the early stages of planning for exportingnatural gas from British Columbia.

• 2013-11-18: Spectra building pipeline to export through BC LNG terminal

  British Columbia, Canada, enjoys an abundance of natural gas resources that can serve the province and North America’s energy needs, and also serve growing global demand.

  —Spectra Energy

LNG Export from Nova Scotia

• WALB in Albany, GA notices New England Spectra pipeline plans,

  

  HOUSTON, July 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Spectra Energy (NYSE: SE) and Spectra Energy Partners (NYSE: SEP) today announced plans to expand natural gas pipeline capacity into the New England Market to meet critical demand for reliable electric power generation. These plans for expansion of the Algonquin and Maritimes pipeline systems….

• 2012-10-24: Goldboro LNG terminal would use existing Maritime pipeline, The Globe and Mail, Published Wednesday, Oct. 24 2012, 7:00 PM EDT Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 24 2012, 7:00 PM EDT,

  A LNG facility proposed for Nova Scotia would be located next to the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, a 1,400-kilometre system that carries natural gas to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and New England.

  

• In race to export LNG, a new Atlantic plan, by Bertrand Marotte, The Globe and Mail, Published Wednesday, Oct. 24 2012, 11:45 AM EDT, Last updated Thursday, Oct. 25 2012, 9:51 AM EDT

  Alfred Sorensen, president of Pieridae Energy Canada, has a dream to build a major liquefied natural gas export facility on Canada’s East Coast, the first of its kind. The $5-billion (U.S.) project is an eastern addition to a race unfolding in Western Canada to build LNG infrastructure that would allow major exports from the coast of British Columbia to global markets.

  The former Duke Energy Corp. executive says the timing and conditions are right for construction of a complex in Goldboro, N.S. that would liquefy natural gas and ship it to markets in Europe and India. The site would have on-site storage capacity of 420,000 cubic metres.

LNG Export to Free Trade Areas (FTA)

• House subcommittee wants to export gas

  “The amount of natural gas that is technically recoverable in the United States is 97 times greater than all of the natural gas we consumed in 2011. In plain terms, this means we have an abundance of natural gas that we are not using. It is just sitting there, and this is really not smart policy, or smart business.”

  —Ted Poe (R TX-02) of Houston, Spectra Energy’s home town.

  

• 2013-12-05: FERC Commissioner pushes LNG exports to House Subcommitee

  The large amount of natural gas in the U.S. is also creating an impetus for something that was nearly unimaginable ten or fifteen year ago, LNG export, as opposed to import terminals. This is an area of significant workload increase for the Commission.

  Presently, the FERC has thirteen proposed LNG export terminals and three LNG import terminals in some phase of the permitting process. As you would expect, the reviews that entail safely siting large multi-billion dollar energy projects such as these are extensive.

  —Tony Clark, FERC Commissioner

  

Trans-Pacific Parternership (TPP)

• The Trans-Pacific Partnership and LNG exports

  “Hopefully, we will change that and become an exporter, especially of natural gas.”

  “Right now, we are in the middle of negotiating a new agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the TPP, as an opportunity for the United States to expand its trade network in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. TPP will open trade between the United States and 11 other countries. This would make it America’s largest free trade agreement.”

  —Ted Poe (R TX-02) of Houston, Chairman of the SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION, AND TRADE of the COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
• Can Sabal Trail fracked methane go to China?

  People talk about LNG exports to China through the Transco – Sabal Trail – Florida Southeast Connection pipeline, even though FPL says it knows nothing about exports through that Southeast Market Pipelines Project (SMPP), and FERC also seems to know nothing. If that fracked gas really can go to China, where’s FERC’s rationale for federal eminent domain, which depends on Florida needing the gas? Nevermind FPL’s own 10-Year Site Plan doesn’t support a need for the gas, and EPA doesn’t buy what it’s seen as rationalizations for that alleged need: can the gas go to China?

• Sierra Club petition against TPP

  A dangerous trade pact between the U. S. and 11 countries along the Pacific Rim called the Trans-Pacific Partnership would strip our government’s power to manage U.S. gas exports, opening the floodgates for fracking, sacrificing our air and water quality in order to feed foreign markets. So it’s no surprise the United States Trade Representative is negotiating this trade agreement in almost complete secrecy.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) aka Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA)

• LNG export to Europe with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)?

  More “free trade” LNG export destinations from Florida will open up if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) passes, to the 28 EU member countries:

• Protests work, even against TPP, TAFTA, and EU demands for U.S. methane exports after Ukraine,

  Speaking on a visit to Brussels to discuss trade relations and the Ukraine crisis, Obama said concluding a new transatlantic trade pact, now under negotiation, would make it easier for Washington to license more gas exports.

  They have already stepped up efforts to reduce reliance on Russia but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she supported asking Obama to relax restrictions on exports of U.S. gas.

  
  Image by Monsieur Fou, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Blanket non-FTA LNG Export

• FERC and FE oversight committee approved LNG export legislation for non-FTA countries

  Should we let Congress authorize blanket LNG export to 159 WTO member countries, including China and Ukraine, so fossil fuel companies can profit by taking our lands to pipe fracked methane to Florida? If not, it’s time to call your House member.

• Food and Water Watch against LNG exports

  FWW has been on the case against H.R. 6 that would authorize LNG exports to all WTO member countries since that bill passed the subcommittee in early April, before it passed the main committee April 30th.