NJBIA has filed a legal brief supporting Transcontinental Pipeline’s effort to have the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit review a decision by three of its judges that threw out regulatory approval of the Transco natural gas pipeline expansion in New Jersey.
Attorneys Daniel S. Weinberger, Jennifer A. Hradil, and Andrew J. Marino, of the Gibbons P.C. law firm filed the amicus curie brief Sept. 20 on behalf of NJBIA, which is asking the full Third Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case decided by a three-judge panel on July 30.
In that unanimous July decision, Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard, J. Michelle Childs, and Bradley Garcia overturned Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval of the Transco Regional Energy Access Expansion Project, which would add 36 miles of new pipe in Pennsylvania and a compressor station and other infrastructure upgrades in New Jersey.
The appellate panel agreed with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, the State of New Jersey and others who argued that federal regulators had failed to adequately consider the need for the project as well as the pipeline expansion’s impact on state law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The panel remanded the case back to FERC for reconsideration.
In its brief, NJBIA argues that New Jersey, which does not produce natural gas and has no natural gas reserves of its own, depends on interstate pipelines to import its supply of natural gas from Pennsylvania. In fact, New Jersey is the nation’s 14th highest consumer of natural gas and many of its industries, particularly manufacturing, depend on a steady, market-priced energy supply, which the appellate panel’s July ruling jeopardizes, the brief states.
“The elimination of the project will materially increase costs for New Jersey’s consumers of natural gas, including New Jersey’s manufacturers and other businesses,” the brief states, adding that the ruling will also “detrimentally impact the country’s energy security and economy, and particularly New Jersey’s.”
By prioritizing the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities’ analysis over FERC’s and siding with the State of New Jersey, the appellate panel has overturned FERC’s “reasoned judgment,” the NJBIA brief states. “The Panel Opinion thus effectively afforded individual State governments the ability to block construction of interstate gas pipelines.”
