Could be a most interesting hearing this week for Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Lankford and others on the Senate Energy Committee as they grill FERC members on their new pipeline policy statement.
On Thursday, the Senators will have an opportunity to question all five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the recent decision to consider environmental justice when approving projects.
Republicans and Democrats alike raised critical questions at the time after FERC adopted the first-ever climate change threshold, a move adopted by the Democrats who now control the commission. The vote was 3-2 to change decades of precedent on how the energy infrastructure is approved.
Sen. Lankford raised questions about the new policy and so did West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin who chairs the Energy Committee.
Manchin called the move “reckless” while Gillian Giannetti, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Sustainable FERC Project called it “a historic day.”