D.C. Circuit Remands Cove Point Decision to FERC
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted Washington Gas Light’s (WGL) petition for review of the FERC orders authorizing the Cove Point LNG expansion project. The Court remanded the case to FERC so the Commission could have an opportunity to “more fully address whether the Expansion can go forward without causing unsafe leakage” on WGL’s system.
As the Wall Street Journal [subscription required] quotes from the Court’s opinion, “substantial evidence supports FERC’s conclusion that any threat of increased leakage is due to defects in WGL’s system, but we grant WGL’s petition because substantial evidence does not support FERC’s conclusion that WGL can address safety concerns before the project’s in-service date.” The Court went on to reject WGL’s claim that the terminal operator, Dominion Cove Point, must pay to fix WGL’s system, finding that the “unblended LNG meets the specifications WGL accepted in its tariff and FERC reasonably concluded WGL should be responsible for paying to adapt its system to fulfill its commitments.”