New FERC Chair Mark Christie Wisely Ends the War on Pipelines Started Under Dick Glick

Guest Post from the Institute for Energy Research.

Under the leadership of newly installed Chairman Mark Christie, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) officially ended its misguided effort to revise its greenhouse gas policy statements on Friday.

This decision ends one of the commission’s most disruptive initiatives under former Chair Richard Glick. Glick had long advocated for the agency to subject new natural gas infrastructure to increased regulatory hurdles under the guise of mitigating the impacts of climate change. The policy would have impacted natural gas pipelines and LNG terminals in particular.

Prompted by these actions under then Chairman Glick, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) launched the FERC Transparency Project. IER criticized these policies for intentionally increasing litigation and delays in pipeline development, conflicting with FERC’s mission to ensure reliable gas supplies at a reasonable cost.

IER also pursued several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to investigate the details behind the policy shift, particularly whether external political pressures from the White House influenced FERC’s decision-making process. IER was repeatedly stonewalled in our requests for transparency, having had to sue the agency on multiple requests.

It was revealed, however, that Chairman Glick had multiple meetings with White House officials, especially in and around the time the policy statements were proposed.

Tom Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, issued the following statement:

“I’m very glad to see that Chairman Christie’s leadership is immediately having a positive impact. During Chairman Glick’s tenure, FERC tried to impose an impossible standard on the approval of natural gas pipelines, which would have marked a clear departure from the agency’s statutory mission.

“We are very pleased that Chairman Christie’s first major action is to steer FERC back toward its statutory mandate, which is to ensure reliable gas supplies at a reasonable cost to consumers. Let’s hope he takes another important step of improving transparency at the agency, especially when it comes to the Freedom of Information Act.”

The decision announced on Friday is the first major policy action by Chair Mark Christie, who strongly opposed the proposed policy statement. Christie was appointed to lead FERC by President Donald Trump last week.

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