Since February, with only two sitting members, the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been without a quorum. That has meant it can’t do its job, which is to approve and regulate interstate oil and natural gas pipelines, the transmission and wholesale sales of electricity, approve liquefied natural gas storage facilities and license non-federal hydro-electric plants. That paralysis suits anti-fossil-fuel activists just fine. They’d like FERC to remain hamstrung.
That’s because these climate hawks seek to keep most coal, oil, and natural gas in the ground as a means of reducing the impact of global warming. They have long viewed the 40-year-old commission as a rubber-stamp for pipelines and other projects that have benefited the nation’s boom in oil and natural gas production. That boom has grown rapidly in the past decade by means of hydraulic fracturing of underground shale formations. As long as there is no FERC quorum, it’s a “net positive for the climate,” according to the Oil Change International, an anti-fossil fuel research and advocacy group.
Five protesters therefore were on hand Thursday at a confirmation hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for two new FERC commissioners, Robert Powelson and Neil Chatterjee. After chanting slogans such as “FERC is killing Pennsylvanians” and “Shut FERC down,” four of the five were arrested by Capitol police and charged with obstruction. One paid a fine and three were detained overnight for arraignment Friday. It was not the first such protest, but usually protesters are hustled out on the room and let go instead being arrested.
Mark Hand at ThinkProgress reports:
Without an expanded pipeline network, companies would likely be forced to leave natural gas in the ground, according to the activists. Natural gas is mostly methane, a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
“Their rubber-stamping of fracked gas permits disregards the harms such projects inflict on communities, towns, and the climate,” Lee Stewart, an organizer with Beyond Extreme Energy and one of the four arrested in the hearing room, said in a statement. “Until FERC is replaced with an agency dedicated to a just transition off fossil fuels and to an exploitation-free energy system based on localized, renewable energy, business as usual is unacceptable.” [...]
During the hearing, Powelson, a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and Chatterjee, a senior energy policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), pointed to the continued use of coal, natural gas, and nuclear as good options for meeting the nation’s need for baseload power generation.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2rZtHEJ
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