Washington — Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline project appears to be officially dead today after the natural gas goliath’s subsidiary Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requesting a withdrawal of its certificate application.
Tennessee Gas last month suspended plans to embark on the $3.3 billion project, asking FERC to stop processing its application for a controversial pipeline that would have run from Wright, New York and across Massachusetts to Dracut, carrying gas from the fracking fields of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
The company claimed it simply did not have enough customers lined up to make NED worthwhile. But a public outcry over the company’s eminent domain strategies to gain easements for the pipeline path, and the revelation that much of the gas was for export, may have also prompted the company to axe the plan.
The withdrawal request comes in time for a May 26 deadline for the company to issue a status report to FERC. And in a letter to FERC Secretary Kimberly D. Bose, J. Curtis Moffatt, Tennessee Gas Deputy General Counsel and Vice President said it was “providing notice of withdrawal,” and “appreciates the Commission Staff’s diligent efforts on the Project, during both the pre-filing and certificate review processes.”
Kinder Morgan spokesperson Richard Wheatley told the Edge that FERC has 15 days to act on it. Whether Tennessee Gas will file again with FERC, should future market conditions change, is up to the company, said FERC Media Relations Division’s Tamara Young-Allen.
“FERC has no influence and has no say as to when a potential applicant may file. If the company should file a new application, the Commission’s review process would begin anew,” Young-Allen told the Edge.
“FERC’s Pre-Filing Process that the company used with the NE Direct Project is an option available to applicants seeking authorization for interstate natural gas infrastructure. So Tennessee Gas could opt to use that process again, if it desires, or it could skip that process and file a formal application, or not file anything. This is a decision that is totally up to Tennessee Gas.”
The certificate application withdrawal will not, according to Wheatley, have any effect on Tennessee Gas’ Connecticut Expansion Project, a pipeline storage loop that requires a slice of Massachusetts-owned and protected land in Sandisfield, Massachusetts.
