Three AGs Filed Comments Opposing GTN Xpress Pipeline Project following New CEQ Guidance

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, joined by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, submitted comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission emphasizing the inadequacies of the GTN Xpress Project’s Environmental Impact Statement following the Council on Environmental Quality’s recent release of interim guidance on how greenhouse gas emissions should be analyzed under the National Environmental Policy Act. The project would expand the capacity of an existing pipeline. In the comments, the AGs explain that the new guidance confirms concerns they raised in their comments last December, which argued that the environmental review for the project is inadequate and violates the law. The AGs maintain that in order to comply with the law, the agency must consider the full scope of emissions that would result from the pipeline expansion, rather than its current approach of treating “upstream and certain downstream emissions as if they did not exist [by] claiming they are generally not reasonably foreseeable.”