United States Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso, senior energy lawmakers in the Upper House of Congress, introduced Monday a legislative proposal to accelerate the permitting process for energy and mineral projects.
“After over a year of holding hearings in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, thoughtfully considering input from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and engaging in good faith negotiations, Ranking Member Barrasso and I have put together a commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation that will speed up permitting and provide more certainty for all types of energy and mineral projects without bypassing important protections for our environment and impacted communities,” Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.
One change sought by the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is to remove the requirement for a permit from the Department of the Interior (DOI) for hydrocarbon drilling in lease areas not owned by the federal government or where it owns less than 50 percent of the resources. This provision does not apply to Indian lands.
In Indian lands, the right of way granted by a tribe would also not require approval by the Interior secretary if the provision of access complied with existing laws.
For offshore oil and gas, the proposed law asks that the DOI conduct at least one oil and gas lease sale each year from 2025 to 2029.
For offshore wind, the DOI shall offer for lease at least 400,000 acres per year. A license with an area of less than 80,000 acres is not counted toward the annual minimum requirement.
The bill also asks that the Department of Energy decide pending applications on the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) based on previous economic and climate reviews unless the agency completes fresh reviews.
In January the Biden administration temporarily shelved pending decisions on LNG export to countries that have no free trade agreement with the U.S. The DOE moratorium serves to give the department time to review permitting considerations involving greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impact, energy prices and domestic gas supply.
The bill sets deadlines for authorities to make decisions on aspects of the permitting process for oil, gas, mineral, renewable energy and grid projects.
“The United States of America is blessed with abundant natural resources that have powered our nation to greatness and allow us to help our friends and allies around the world,” said Manchin, an ex-Democrat who turned independent this year. “Unfortunately, today, our outdated permitting system is stifling our economic growth, geopolitical strength, and ability to reduce emissions.”
“Our bipartisan bill secures future access to oil and gas resources on federal lands and waters,” Barrasso, a ranking member of Manchin’s committee, said.
“We permanently end President Biden’s reckless ban on natural gas exports,” the Republican added.
Lobby group the American Petroleum Institute (API) welcomed the bill. “At a time of persistent inflation, it’s long past time to fix our nation’s broken permitting system and unlock the domestic resources needed to meet the rising demand for affordable, reliable energy,” API executive vice president and chief advocacy officer Amanda Eversole said in a statement.
“This legislation not only takes tangible steps toward a more transparent, consistent, and timely permitting process but also ends the administration’s misguided LNG export permit pause, strengthening American energy leadership while helping to reduce emissions worldwide,” Eversole added, calling the proposal an “urgent priority.”
However, Oakland, California-based environmental campaign group Sierra Club warned that the bill would “open up federal lands and waters to more leasing and drilling and unnecessarily rush the review of proposed gas export projects, forcing decisions to be based on flawed, outdated studies.”
It viewed the bill’s provisions to quicken clean energy development as redundant, saying, “… the Biden-Harris administration has already put forward comprehensive policies to unleash clean energy, improve the resilience of the power grid, and improve affordability for consumers”.
Instead, Sierra Club endorsed the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act proposed last year, which it said “offers a real solution to address permitting issues that often slow the deployment of renewable energy sources and the transmission infrastructure that is crucially needed to support them, without including handouts for the fossil fuel industry or sacrificing communities.”
Source: www.rigzone.com
