Columbia Gulf gets Louisiana pipeline draft EIS

Columbia Gulf Transmission LLC has received the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for its 725-MMcfd East Lateral Xpress project. East Lateral Xpress will interconnect with Venture Global Gator Express LLC for ultimate delivery of feed gas to Venture Global Plaquemines LNG LLC’s 20-million tonne/year liquefaction plant in Plaquemines Parish, La.

With the exception of climate change impacts, FERC staff concluded that approval of the project, with recommended mitigation measures, would not result in significant environmental impacts. FERC staff continues to be unable to determine significance with regards to climate change impacts.

The draft EIS addressed the potential environmental effects of the construction and operation of:

• 8.1 miles of 30-in. OD pipeline lateral in Barataria Bay, Jefferson and Plaquemines Parish, La.
• Centerville compressor station, a new 23,470-hp station at an abandoned Columbia Gulf compressor station site in St. Mary Parish, La.
• Golden Meadow compressor station, a new 23,470-hp compressor station adjacent to an existing tie-in in Lafourche Parish, La.
• Point-of-delivery meter station in Plaquemines Parish.
• Tie-in with two mainline valves on a new platform in Barataria Bay.

FERC acknowledged that the project would increase the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG), in combination with past and future emissions from all other sources and would contribute to climate change, but explained that FERC staff have not identified a methodology to “attribute discrete, quantifiable, physical effects on the environment to the project’s incremental contribution to GHG.”

The agency said it has looked at atmospheric modeling used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others, and had found that these models are not reasonable for project-level analysis. “For example,” FERC said, “these global models are not suited to determine the incremental impact of individual projects, due to both scale and overwhelming complexity. We also reviewed simpler models and mathematical techniques to determine global physical effects caused by GHG emissions, such as increases in global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, atmospheric forcing, or ocean CO₂ absorption. We could not identify a reliable, less complex model for this task and thus staff could not determine specific localized or regional physical impacts from GHG emissions from the project.”

Without the ability to determine discrete resource impacts, FERC said its staff are unable to assess the project’s contribution to climate change through any objective analysis of physical impact attributable to the project.