Ahead of an imminent shutdown of the project due to a court ruling, the Southeast Market Pipelines natural gas transportation project obtained a positive final environmental review from federal regulators, in response to a request from the pipeline developers.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Feb. 5 issued a final supplemental environmental impact statement reiterating its findings in the draft impact statement, saying that though the project is expected to cause temporary and permanent environmental impacts, these would not be significant as long as the pipeline developers implement previously established mitigation measures.
The supplemental impact statements are expansions of FERC's review of pipeline applications for the project. The expansions were required by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ruled in August 2017 that additional analysis was needed on downstream greenhouse gas emissions from power plants the project would serve.
The project is designed to be a major gas conduit of about 685 miles of pipeline in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. It is made up of the Enbridge Inc.-led Sabal Trail pipeline, Williams Partners LP's Hillabee expansion and NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Southeast Connection project. It is expected to add up to 1.1 Bcf/d of gas transportation capacity into Florida.
The D.C. Circuit on Feb. 1 stood by its decision that vacated FERC's approvals of the project. The court agreed with environmental groups that FERC's impact statement still lacked information on greenhouse gas emissions. A mandate implementing the court decision is expected to be issued Feb. 7, which could force the companies to halt operations at certain facilities and possibly result in reliability issues connected to gas delivery and power generation in Florida.
Enbridge and partners' Sabal Trail Transmission LLC, Williams Partners' Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC and NextEra's Florida Southeast Connection LLC on Feb. 2 asked FERC to release the final environmental impact statement and issue temporary emergency certificates so the pipeline segments could continue operations. (FERC docket CP15-17, et al.)
