Ed Whitfield: “I would just like to clarify that H.R. 161 is certainly not any drastic piece of legislation. The Energy Policy Act of…”

“I would just like to clarify that H.R. 161 is certainly not any drastic piece of legislation. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 designated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as the lead agency charged with coordinating and reviewing natural gas pipeline project applications; therefore, FERC conducts the environmental review of each project as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, and is given authority to set deadlines for other agencies to issue an approval or denial of an associated permit. When these applications are filed at FERC, the application also is given to other agencies that may have jurisdiction over the Clean Water Act, maybe like the Corps of Engineers, the Clean Air Act, the EPA perhaps, or Endangered Species; so it is not like they just have 90 days to look at this. They get the application the same time as FERC does. The problem that FERC has had--and they have had both Democrat and Republican Commissioners come to Congress and say that they need more authority over these other agencies, so this bill does precisely that. Once FERC has made a final determination and completed its process, it gives the other agencies another 90 days--even though they have been working on it for a year in advance of that--another 90 days to complete it, and if they want another 30 days, then they can do that as well.…”