Dear Senator:
On behalf of over 340 organizations, representing millions of members and supporters, we write to express our opposition to the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (S. 4753). This legislation guts bedrock environmental protections, endangers public health, opens up tens of millions of acres of public lands and hundreds of millions of acres of offshore waters to further oil and gas leasing, gives public lands to mining companies, and would defacto rubberstamp gas export projects that harm frontline communities and perpetuate the climate crisis.
The provisions fast tracking Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports alone could lock in new annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants and the potential to lock in additional hundreds of millions of tons of climate pollution each year for decades to come. This legislation would force the Department of Energy (DOE) to use outdated climate science and economic analysis and a total lack of assessment of environmental justice impacts and decide whether to approve pending applications whose terminals have been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), including the massive CP2 project, within 90 days of the bill’s enactment or they are automatically approved. The bill undermines the Biden-Harris pause on LNG exports and permanently restricts DOE’s review authority by limiting the time DOE has to review exports and requiring automatic approval after 90 day periods. Without enough time to assess the full scope of the environmental, community, and economic harms of exports, DOE could be forced to approve export applications. The legislation’s automatic approval provision also effectively removes the requirement that exports that are contrary to the public interest be rejected and does so in a manner that insulates all such approvals from judicial review.
This legislation will also lead to more leasing, more drilling without federal oversight and community input, more industry interest in lands adjacent to federal lands, more irresponsible speculation, less mitigation, and more orphaned and abandoned wells. These provisions will gut protections for millions of acres of public lands and greatly elevate oil and gas extraction as the highest use of public lands — and will hamstring renewable energy deployment on public lands and on the outer continental shelf by further tying it to oil and gas leasing.
LNG Exports
Title VI of the legislation would effectively curtail DOE’s review of gas export applications and extensions. The bill will dramatically limit DOE’s ability to gain a complete understanding of the environmental, community, and economic harms of authorizing more LNG exports. These provisions will lead to the rubber stamping of LNG exports that will harm American consumers, do nothing to serve national security interests, perpetuate the climate crisis, and cause further devastation to communities in the Gulf. The bill’s requirement that DOE make its decision on new applications within 90 days of FERC completing its environmental review of the LNG terminal means that DOE will no longer be able to conduct a supplemental NEPA analysis that tiers off of FERC’s review but covers topics FERC does not, including the upstream and downstream impacts of exporting LNG, and DOE will have to fast-track its public interest assessment. The result of both will likely be that the harms of exports do not get adequately analyzed and, because DOE must show that the harms of an export authorization outweigh its benefits before denying it, that DOE will be forced to grant export applications that should be rejected. The bill creates an even bigger problem for applications to re-export via Mexico and Canada by starting the 90-day clock upon publication of the draft environmental review document and forcing DOE to make a decision without the benefit of public comment or a final environmental analysis.
One of the most egregious provisions in the bill is the automatic approval of applications for export when any of the 90-day periods lapse. This creates every incentive for a fossil-fuel friendly administration to do no analysis and have every single application for export approved once the 90 days expires. The bill completely removes the requirement that exports that are contrary to the public interest be rejected and does so in a manner that insulates all such approvals from judicial review. The bill effectively removes all basis to challenge an export authorization that is “approved” statutorily based on the passage of time. In addition, the bill ensures that pending and new applications for gas exports be reviewed using studies that DOE has clearly said are outdated and fail to consider important harms, including costs to domestic customers and environmental justice communities, potentially for years to come. The bill requires that any updated studies DOE conducts on climate and macroeconomic impacts be subject to the peer-review process–a step that the existing studies the bill is requiring DOE to use never went through and a process that could take years. In the meantime, the bill forces DOE to use climate and economic studies that are based on stale information and flawed assumptions.
Oil and Gas
Title II of the legislation, including sections 201, 202, and 203, are drawn straight from the oil and gas industry’s wish-list. These provisions will gut protections for millions of acres of public lands and greatly elevate oil and gas extraction as the highest use of public lands. Offshore, these provisions override important statutory protections in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, designed to protect the environment, by forcing Interior to rewrite its five-year offshore leasing program and hold oil and gas lease sales despite environmental concerns. It also constrains Interior’s ability to add environmental stipulations to new offshore leases and fast-tracks the bid approval process, limiting Interior’s ability to decide if a new lease is fiscally and environmentally sound. Onshore, these provisions would cripple vital protections for endangered species, will lead to more leasing, more drilling without federal oversight or community and Tribal input, more interest in drilling on lands adjacent to federal lands, more irresponsible speculation, less mitigation, and more orphaned and abandoned wells. In particular, Section 203 of the bill would exempt “split-estate” scenarios — situations where leased land is non-federal and where the federal government owns less than half of the subsurface minerals, a common occurrence in the West — from the federal drilling permit process and instead puts these decisions in states’ hands, skirting bedrock laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the National Historic Preservation Act. It also exempts these situations from federal bonding and mitigation requirements.
Mining
Section 210 of Title II is the wishlist for the most toxic industry in America, the mining industry.
It would first take the already antiquated mining law backwards by removing the validityrequirement for mineral claims by provisions such as 210(a) which is a trojan horse that will remove the requirement of establishing claim validity. It also allows companies to file an unlimited number of mill site claims that will be used for dumping their waste or building roads and pipelines on public lands. Finally, it establishes an abandoned hardrock mine fund, but fails to fund it through any new royalty or with any new responsibility on mining companies who have already left hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines polluting the country.
Judicial Review
The legislation contains severe restrictions on judicial review that, if passed, would prevent stakeholders, local governments, and impacted communities from holding the government accountable. Specifically, Title I would shorten the statute of limitations under the Administrative Procedures Act to just 150 days. This means that communities would have to file suit for covered projects within just a few months or lose their chance to challenge ill-informed decisions forever. Worse, due to inadequate notice requirements, it is possible impacted parties may lose their chance to challenge a project before they even become aware of a decision impacting the health or safety of their community. The abbreviated time frame and lack of adequate notice places an undue burden on interested parties and communities with limited resources and threatens to exacerbate environmental injustices.
While the bill includes provisions that may possibly accelerate the deployment of the critical clean energy and the transmission infrastructure we have been championing, they should not be paired with massive giveaways to the fossil fuel and mining industry. The A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act and the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act, offer real solutions to address permitting issues that often slow the deployment of renewable energy sources and the transmission infrastructure that is crucially needed to support them, without including handouts for the fossil fuel industry or sacrificing communities. We urge Congress to reject this proposal and instead, put forward real solutions to build a clean energy economy, and not pair those reforms with giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.
Thank you,
| 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations 198 methods 350 Bay Area Action 350 Conejo / San Fernando Valley 350 Eugene 350 Mass 350 NYC 350 Sacramento 350 Seattle 350 Triangle Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments American Jewish World Service Animal Welfare Institute Animals Are Sentient Beings, Inc Appalachian Voices Arizona Mining Reform Coalition Avalon Universal Enterprises Azul Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community Berks Gas Truth Better Path Coalition Between the Waters Beyond Extreme Energy Beyond Plastics Black Hills Clean Water Alliance BlueWaveNJ Bold Alliance Boston Catholic Climate Movement Boston Clean Energy Coalition Breach Collective Bucks Environmental Action Building Unity Businesses for a Livable Climate Businesses for Conservation and Climate Action Buy Local, Grow Local California Communities Against Toxics California Environmental Voters California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice ClimateVoice, a project of the Tides Center Coal River Mountain Watch Coalition to Ban Unsafe Oil Trains Coalition to Protect America's National Parks Colorado Businesses for a Livable Climate Columbia Riverkeeper Common Defense Common Ground Rising Community for Sustainable Energy Compressor Free Franklin Conservation Lands Foundation Continental Divide Trail Coalition CTR CWA Local 1081 Dayenu Nassau County Defend Ballona Wetlands Defenders of Wildlife Des Moines County Farmers and Neighbors for Optimal Healthier Optimal Health Don't Gas the Meadowlands Coalition Don't Waste Michigan Dragoon Conservation Alliance Earth Ethics, Inc. 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