End Eminent Domain for Fracked Gas-to-Methanol Refinery Feeder Pipeline
Tell FERC: End Eminent Domain for Fracked Gas-to-Methanol Pipeline
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fossil fuel industry is full steam ahead trying to build massive fossil fuel infrastructure on the Columbia River. You only have until April 1 to speak up and oppose a new fracked gas pipeline.
Does eminent domain for a fracked gas export pipeline sound like a bad idea to you? How about extending the right of eminent domain for another two years when the company has failed to meet FERC’s requirements? That’s the plan for Kalama, unless FERC changes course.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Rubberstamp Commission (FERC) is currently considering a request to rubberstamp another year of eminent domain authority for a pipeline that would deliver a staggering quantity of fracked gas to the world’s largest fracked gas-to-methanol refinery proposed in Kalama, Washington.
Join us in standing in solidarity with the landowners opposing the Kalama Lateral pipeline, and sign the petition urging FERC to deny the request by Williams Pipeline to extend its certificate for the Kalama Lateral pipeline.
When FERC approves fracked gas pipelines, the agency grants private, for-profit companies the right to seize private property to build the pipelines. In the case of the Kalama Lateral, the proposed pipeline would ship 320 million cubic feet of gas per day to a proposed refinery that would turn the gas into methanol and ship the methanol overseas.
You can learn more about the project and its impacts here.
We are making real progress in stopping this project, and FERC should pay attention.
In 2019, Columbia Riverkeeper, local activists in Kalama, and our many allies in the Power Past Fracked Gas campaign won a major victory when the State of Washington refused to issue a key permit for the refinery and instead required a new environmental analysis to replace the inaccurate, skewed analysis put forward by the project’s backers. Also in 2019, FERC insisted that it would not grant any further extensions for the Kalama Lateral unless the project was under construction, or construction was “imminent.” Due to local opposition, serious misrepresentations by the methanol developer, Northwest Innovation Works, and major headwinds in global energy markets, the project is nowhere close to beginning construction. Will FERC keep its word to local landowners who have already waited for 4 years under the threat of eminent domain?
