A federal appeals court in Boston Friday rejected challenges to FERC’s order conditionally approving Weaver’s Cove Energy’s proposed liquefied natural Gas (LNG) terminal in Fall River, MA, saying it was unlikely that the project would get built anyway.

The Weaver’s Cove project “may well never go forward because FERC’s approval of the project is expressly conditioned on approval by the [United States Coast Guard] and the [Department of Interior]. Neither agency has yet given its final recommendation, and each has expressed serious reservations about the project,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said.

The court ruling came just days after the Coast Guard ruled that the proposed LNG terminal “is unsuitable from a navigation safety perspective for the type, size and frequency of LNG marine traffic” associated with the project (see Daily GPI, Oct. 25). Weaver’s Cove is expected to appeal the decision.

The city of Fall River, the attorneys general for Massachusetts and Rhode Island and the Conservation Law Foundation sought reversal of FERC’s July 2005 order granting conditional approval of the Weaver’s Cove terminal and associated pipeline, as well as reversal of subsequent orders denying reopening of the record and rehearing.

“The prospect of entangling ourselves in a challenge to a decision whose effects may never be ‘felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties’ is an especially troublesome one,” the three-judge panel said.

“Our decision does not preclude appellants from again petitioning FERC to reopen the record — or subsequently seeking redress with this court — when the future of [the Weaver’s Cove] proposed LNG project is more certain,” the court noted.

The Weaver’s Cove project has been the target of intense opposition by local, state and federal officials. If built, it would provide 800 MMcf/d of peak sendout capacity, 400 MMcf/d of baseload supply and 200,000 metric tons of LNG storage. In June the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection suspended review of the project (see Daily GPI, June 6). Weaver’s Cove has appealed to the Department of Commerce to override Massachusetts’ objection to its controversial LNG terminal project (see Daily GPI, Sept. 13).

In August Rhode Island authorities denied Weaver’s Cove permission to dredge approximately 230,000 cubic yards of the navigation channel in Mount Hope Bay (see Daily GPI, Aug. 14).

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