There’s never been any doubt that Kinder Morgan’s Palmetto Project to gouge through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to Jacksonville is an interstate pipeline and therefore under the jurisdiction of FERC. It does aready have one FERC docket. The only reason it doesn’t have a pre-filing or regular filing FERC docket is it just hasn’t gotten that far in the FERC process yet.

Update 2015-03-26: Actually, FERC doesn’t have nearly as much authority over oil pipelines.

FERC’s own docket OR15-13, was started 23 January 2015 with Palmetto Products Pipe Line LLC’s Petition for Declaratory Order of Palmetto Products Pipe Line LLC under OR15-13 and continued with most recent item FERC’s Notice of Petition for Declaratory Order re Palmetto Products Pipe Line LLC under OR15-13.

This is not a secret. I’ve blogged it twice on other forums, in February and in March.

Here is FERC’s docket OR15-13 advertised in the Federal Register. Here is an attorney working for Palmetto on that docket.

This has never been any secret. Linked into Kinder Morgan’s own Palmetto Project web page is the Open Season Notice for Palmetto, which says:

“The Pipeline will provide interstate transportation service, subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), and is scheduled to become operational on or before July 1, 2017.”

Palmetto doesn’t have a regular FERC pre-filing (PF) or permit request (CP) because it simply hasn’t gotten that far in the process. See this FERC timeline schematic. Actually, FERC doesn’t do pre-filings or construction permits for oil pipelines. See new blog post.

There has never been any doubt that Palmetto Pipe Line falls under FERC, according to all the documentation by Kinder Morgan and by FERC.

-jsq

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