Tag Archives: boondoggle

The LNG export shell game: FERC, FE, MARAD, or NEB?

If you’re a Houston fossil fuel company and you can’t get FERC approval fast enough, try FE, or MARAD! Deepwater Port Location & Status Map If that doesn’t work, ship it by land through Canada or Mexico! Local property rights, they laugh at those! Rio Grande, Suwannee River, or Hudson River: just minor obstacles to greed! If the people are tired of profit being more important than their land, water, air, or safety, it’s time to stop this fossil fuel shell game.

MARAD

Continue reading The LNG export shell game: FERC, FE, MARAD, or NEB?

Petition for GAO to rein in FERC

Please sign this petition for an independent investigation of FERC by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Or call or write your own members of Congress and ask them to investigate FERC and rein in its rubberstamping of new fossil fuel projects.

FERC has actually denied two pipelines out of a huge number of applications. Both were part of LNG import projects. One of them was about hardship to mineral interest donors, and a fair FERC would conclude hardship to everyone who depends on the Floridan Aquifer for their sole source of drinking water would be more than sufficient reason to deny Sabal Trail. The other`was a Spectra pipeline, so even mighty Spectra can lose at FERC.

But it’s hard for any new fossil fuel project to lose at FERC because FERC brags about “Full Cost Recovery” meaning 100% of FERC’s annual Congressional allocation is paid back out of fees and charges from the very industries FERC supposedly “regulates”. This is what Investopedia defines as regulatory capture: Continue reading Petition for GAO to rein in FERC

What companies are in Sabal Trail and related?

Who is Sabal Trail, anyway? Counties resolving against Sabal Trail might want to make their resolutions against any new pipeline, since there’s already another one proposed for Suwannee County (see below).

Sabal Trail owned and operated by….

Reviving a pipeline idea that failed in the Florida PSC in 2009, FPL put out a request for proposals that was won by Sabal Trail in 2013. Note the original proposed Sabal Trail path in the map below did not go through Georgia; why that changed is a long story apparently only known in full to Spectra, FPL, and Williams Co.

Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC was formed by Continue reading What companies are in Sabal Trail and related?

Duke Energy doesn’t care whether Sabal Trail pipeline is ever built

Raining on Spectra’s pipeline parade, Duke Energy’s Citrus County power plant open house once again emphasized Duke doesn’t care if Spectra and FPL’s fracked methane pipeline is ever built. And it’s not just because of Duke’s power plant that natural gas prices may go up soon: Sabal Trail feeding methane to already-authorized LNG export operations in Florida would also push prices up. So why build that useless Sabal Trail boondoggle? Why build that Duke gas plant, for that matter; why not go straight to solar power in the Sunshine State?

Fred Hiers wrote for Ocala.com 14 July 2014, Utility will build plant with or without new pipeline, Continue reading Duke Energy doesn’t care whether Sabal Trail pipeline is ever built