FERC chairman: Agency ready for gas pipeline application

Kristen Nelson

PNA Editor-in-Chief

Pat Wood’s family is ready to move back to Texas — but he can’t leave Washington, D.C., until he completes the three things he committed to accomplish when he took over in 2001 as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Two are well under way, Wood told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance’s Meet Alaska conference Jan. 24.

The third, unfortunately, is permitting the Alaska gas pipeline, and FERC is still waiting for an application.

Alaska’s gas is critical to the country's energy future, Wood said, and there are several things being done to see that North Slope gas reaches Lower 48 markets.

“Certainly one of the easier things to do is to endorse regulatory language that would take questions or doubts or lingering confusion about what permitting is necessary for that project and how it would be handled by the federal government for the U.S. part of that construction off the table,” Wood said. That got to conference committee in the energy report last year, but died when Congress adjourned.

The federal government has established an interagency task force “to plan and expedite the permitting process that's required” by the departments of State, Interior, Transportation and Energy, Wood said.

In addition to coordinating efforts, FERC's “own office of energy projects is ready to go.” And, Wood said, he’s being “really nice to our friends in Canada so when it comes their turn to do this as well that we can work together with the Canadian authorities on joint permitting just like we do with the states…”

“But we need an application,” Wood said. “We're all dressed up and ready to go to the dance but the date hasn't walked in the door yet.” And, he told the Meet Alaska crowd, “the date’s somewhere in this room…”