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Sunday, June 16, 2024

Environmental defense plaintiff is now siding with STL Spire Pipeline to stop Dec. 13 closure

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Jamieson

Jamieson

The climate change advocacy group that sued the producer of the STL Spire Pipeline is now siding with the utility to prevent its looming Dec. 13 closure.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has stated in reply comments filed with the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeal on Oct. 5 that new information has caused it to believe the STL Spire Pipeline is necessary for the impending winter.

“No one has suggested the Spire pipeline should be shut down immediately,” said Natalie Karas, EDF senior director, and lead counsel.

EDF lodged the lawsuit, EDF v FERC, in January 2020, which has put the 65-mile-long pipeline in limbo.

Since then, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) did not thoroughly evaluate the pipeline before approving it in 2018.

“The Commission contends that its balancing of benefits and adverse impacts was sufficient because the Natural Gas Act ‘vests the Commission' with ‘broad discretion to invoke its expertise in balancing competing interests and drawing administrative lines,’” wrote Senior Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards in the June 22 opinion. “The Commission’s discretion in this sphere is, indeed, broad but it may not go entirely unchecked. The Commission must provide a cogent explanation for how it reached its conclusions. As discussed, FERC failed to balance the benefits and costs in both the Certificate Order and Rehearing Order.”

Spire Energy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but the nation’s highest court rejected its request to stay the mandate of the unanimous decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal that the 2018 approval of the Spire pipeline was unlawful. 

“Spire currently holds a temporary certificate to operate its pipeline, and FERC is poised to issue another temporary certificate to keep the pipeline operational through the winter to ensure reliable service to St. Louis customers,” Karas told the St. Louis Record.

However, if the FERC does not grant an extension to operate the St. Louis Spire gas pipeline beyond Dec. 13, some 400,000 St. Louis residents and businesses serviced by the pipeline are projected to experience gas outages, according to Sean Jamieson, general counsel with Spire Resources.

“A short-term extension is a reasonable short-term solution while FERC conducts a fact-based process under the law to determine the future of the pipeline,” Karas added.

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