If environmental groups and landowners somehow got the idea thatthrough their increased activities at FERC their influence wasgrowing, perhaps they should think again.

“FERC is not the happiness Commission,” FERC Commissioner CurtHebert reminded attendees last week at the Natural Gas Roundtablein Washington, D.C. “We can’t make everybody happy. It’s just notpossible,” he said.

“What I would love to see and what would make us a betterCommission is that we understand that we are an economic agency andwe have to let economic efficiencies be our sail that takes us inthe right direction.”

He expressed concern at what he called the Commission’s “growingtendency to try to make everyone happy.” Hebert, a formerlegislator and regulator in Mississippi, said he’s seen it before.”Ultimately what we do is we fail to make anyone happy becausepeople get drawn out by the process and they think it is anindecisive process.” He said the Commission shouldn’t waste timegiving certain intevenors in expansions or new constructionprojects “false hope” by delaying an inevitable certificate.

That is becoming more difficult not only because of theincreasing number of pipeline expansions but also because of alarge increase in interventions. Interventions at FERC onenvironmental issues of expansion projects have grown exponentiallyin the 1990s. In the Kern River-Mojave expansion project there were200 interventions on environmental issues. With the IroquoisPipeline project in 1991, interventions on environmental issuesrose to 500, and in the current Independence Pipeline projectdocket there are at least 4,500 intervenors.

Hebert assured attendees he’s not a “wacked out right winger whodoesn’t believe in environmental concerns,” but if “we can take allthe money that has been spent on delays to approvals and put thoseon worthwhile projects, that’s something I would like to see.

“I’m not saying the interests of environmentalists andlandowners are not worth while or instructive. What I am saying isas regulators we need to work to balance the interests of all thoseinvolved.. It’s important that we understand that different groupsare weighted differently.” Advocacy groups carry very little weightcompared with public service commissions, which balance opposingviews, he said. “I don’t think it takes a mental giant to figureout who we should weight more.”

With numerous pipeline expansions awaiting Commission approval,Hebert said his fellow commissioners must make sure the businessdecisions of parties who build and pay for new projects are notbeing “questioned and second-guessed.”

Rocco Canonica

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