U.S. energy agency to take on $50-billion pipeline backlog as Senate acts

[IsailedawayfromFR]

The main U.S. energy regulator can get back to the business of approving multi-billion-dollar natural gas pipelines after the Senate moved to fill two of four vacancies at the long-crippled agency.

Senators on Thursday confirmed the nominations to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of Robert Powelson, former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and Neil Chatterjee, a senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

With their appointments, the five-seat panel regains the quorum it needs to approve liquefied natural gas export terminals, clear natural gas pipelines and issue rules governing wholesale power markets. FERC was without a quorum for six months, a stalemate that potentially slowed $50 billion of energy ventures under consideration by the agency.

“We aren’t counting our chickens yet, but the approvals would certainly be a net positive for midstream industry growth, and, ultimately, for producers and consumers of natural gas,” said Ethan Bellamy, a managing director at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Denver.

The most pressing matter facing the new commissioners is the approval of the $2 billion Nexus pipeline that was expected to start moving natural gas by November from Ohio to Ontario. The slow pace of filling FERC vacancies has forced Nexus developers DTE Energy Co. and Enbridge Inc.’s Spectra Energy to push their in-service date to sometime in 2018, DTE CEO Gerry Anderson said on a July earnings call. The project still awaits FERC’s permission to start construction, which could take up to 10 months to complete.
http://www.worldoil.com/news/2017/8/4/us-energy-agency-to-take-on-50-billion-pipeline-backlog-as-senate-acts

This can only lower oil and gas prices further and help our economy.

[Hoodat]

An upward shift of the demand curve will increase gas prices here.  Econ 101.