US Army Corps moves to expedite energy permits under Trump emergency executive order

The US Army Corps of Engineers is currently reviewing over 600 project applications that could be expedited for emergency approval following US President Donald Trump's executive order declaring a "national energy emergency," a USACE spokesperson confirmed to S&P Global Commodity Insights Feb. 20.

The projects, which include a variety of energy and infrastructure ventures, some of which have been awaiting permits for years, were reclassified on the USACE website as eligible for emergency permitting without public notice last week.

Among them is Enbridge's Line 5 oil pipeline, which would carry crude oil and natural gas from Alberta under Lake Michigan into Ontario. The pipeline has been awaiting the Army Corps' approval of a Clean Water Act permit for five years amid a legal battle with the state of Michigan. Other expedited projects include LNG export terminal facilities on the Gulf Coast and a number of gas-fired power plants, as well as a mine project at the ExxonMobil-owned Point Thomson facility in Alaska's North Slope.

Solar projects were also included on the list, despite the exclusion of solar and wind power from Trump's Jan. 20 energy emergency executive order, which called for the immediate expansion of US oil, gas and mineral production. A residential development on land owned by Chevron in California is listed, as is a water pipeline project in the Tampa Bay area, alongside multiple new transmission lines across waterways.

The USACE did not answer questions about why projects were designated as eligible for emergency approval.

"USACE is in the process of reviewing active permit applications relative to the Executive Order," USACE public affairs officer Doug Garman said in an email.

Legal questions

Army Corps rules define an emergency as "a situation which would result in an unacceptable hazard to life, a significant loss of property, or an immediate, unforeseen, and significant economic hardship if corrective action requiring a permit is not undertaken." The designation allows the Corps to speed permits without the typical environmental review processes required of it by the Clean Water Act. Emergency status has traditionally been granted in the wake of natural disasters or to rapidly repair damaged roads or shipping lanes, as in the 2024 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

Trump's Jan. 20 executive order, "Declaring a National Energy Emergency," explicitly required the USACE to create a list and then "use, to the fullest extent possible and consistent with applicable law, the emergency Army Corps permitting provisions to facilitate the nation's energy supply."

Under normal permitting processes, projects undergo extensive environmental impact studies, assessments, and sometimes lengthy community notice and feedback periods. USACE often requires approved projects to reduce or avoid environmental damage or offset harm to waterways by restoring wetlands.

Environmental groups expressed concern the changes would allow the government to sidestep the usual environmental and community reviews and questioned the Trump administration's authority to do so.

"The Trump Administration appears to be gearing up to use false claims of an 'energy emergency' to fast-track and rubber-stamp federal approvals for projects across the country that will be destructive to America's wetlands, waterways, and communities," David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement.

"This end-run around the normal environmental review process is not only harmful for our waters, but is illegal under the Corps' own emergency permitting regulations," Bookbinder continued.

Matt Rota, senior policy director for Healthy Gulf, a Louisiana-based environmental organization, called the USACE's move a "blatant attempt to sidestep environmental laws and fast-track fossil fuel projects at the expense of our wetlands and communities."

The difficulty of receiving Clean Water Act permits has long been a complaint among US energy industry groups, with permitting reform a consensus top priority for many lobbies. In late 2024, a bipartisan permitting reform bill negotiated by outgoing West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and John Barrasso, Republican-Wyoming, won the support of broad swathes of US energy producers.

"We've had this discussion about permitting reform over and over and over again," American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said at a US Energy Association State of the Energy Industry Forum Jan. 24. "If we can finally untie that knot of getting permitting reform done, I think the sky's the limit for American production, because we're going to need the infrastructure to meet growing demand."

The Manchin-Barrasso bill was designed to speed up approvals for most projects, from fossil fuels to pipelines to solar and wind, while speeding but not eliminating environmental review processes. The bill failed to advance in a lame duck session following the November 2024 election.

Absent permanent legislation, projects approved under the emergency provisions would be ripe for legal challenges and increased uncertainty, Timothy Male, executive director of the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

"Some of these projects are more mature and might be closer to breaking ground, and all of a sudden this emergency status is being applied, you could see legal filings happen relatively quickly," he said. "And if you're a company that wants to avoid regulatory risk, would you want to be the guinea pig that tests whether these emergency provisions are legally adequate?"

On Feb. 19, a coalition of environmental groups, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, sued to block another component of Trump's executive order which revoked the permanent withdrawal of 625 million acres of US ocean by former US President Joe Biden as off limits to offshore oil and gas development. A similar legal challenge proved successful in 2019, during Trump's first term, when a federal court found that presidents lack the authority under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to revoke previously issued permanent withdrawals.

Senate pushback

On Feb. 19, US Senators Tim Kaine, Democrat-Virginia, and Martin Heinrich, Democrat-New Mexico said at a press conference that they would soon force a Senate debate and roll call on a privileged joint resolution to end Trump's energy emergency executive order.

Kaine and Heinrich's S.J. Res. 10, introduced Feb. 3, would affirm the "national emergency relating to energy declared on Jan. 20, 2025 by the President in Executive Order 14156 ... is terminated."

"It's not used very often, but this emergency declaration is such a sham devised for such a corrupt purpose that we decided we're using it," Kaine said during a press conference Feb. 19.

Kaine argued that Trump's emergency order was unnecessary, citing record domestic US oil and gas production and the increase in renewable energy projects and factories spurred by former US President Joe Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

"We're going to force a vote, force everybody to declare where they are on this sham emergency declaration and this unnecessary degradation of important environmental protections," Kaine said.