Greenbrier Pipeline Co. LLC is touting itself as the first new project to use FERC’s new pre-filing process, in which project developers file a significant amount of information, including an environmental review and routing analysis, about a proposed project before the actual certificate filing makes it to FERC’s mailbox. Although Greenbrier, a mid-Atlantic project, won’t file its formal certificate application until later this year, the company has filed a significant amount of environmental information under the new pre-filing (PF) docket.

Last month FERC Chairman Patrick Wood endorsed the process that Dominion-sponsored Greenbrier is pioneering. Traditionally, the environmental impact statement (EIS) has been used to tackle landowner concerns “frontally,” but Wood said it has become a “cumbersome” and “contentious” process. “I do think that we have here…a more proactive opportunity” to find a “better way to address landowner issues,” he said. “I strongly encourage the pipeline industry to use [the pre-filing] process to allow landowners to be identified, alternatives examined and problems resolved before the application is filed.”

Under the current pre-filing process, pipeline applicants are advised to file explanations of a project’s benefits, identify all the agencies that will be involved, and provide information on route planning, landowner contacts and agency consultations that have taken place. Companies also are encouraged to develop web sites to provide public information on their projects.

New infrastructure facilities “don’t just happen by fiat. They have to happen as part of a messy, but well-managed process,” Wood said during a press briefing following FERC’s March 27 open meeting.

When asked if he thought gas pipelines were doing a good job of dealing with landowners, Wood said, “I’m not sure we are” at this time. “I mean we’re not going through downtown New York City, but yet [with East Tennessee Natural Gas’ Patriot Project, for example,] we’re going through relatively rural parts of southern Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina that got an unusually large amount of response [against the project] in my estimation from having seen the numbers.”

Greenbrier is a proposed 271-mile interstate pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina. Partners in the project are Dominion and Piedmont Natural Gas. The line will serve some of the same market areas as East Tennessee’s Patriot line. But unlike Patriot, Greenbrier has been under review by FERC’s environmental staff for some time through the pre-filing mechanism. The review already has included site visits, public and agency meetings, and meeting with landowner groups. But the $497 million Greenbrier pipeline won’t start delivering its planned 600,000 Dth/d of gas to customers until the second quarter of 2005.

“We look forward to working with the FERC to refine and improve this innovative pre-filing mechanism, using the Greenbrier Project experience as a model,” said Dominion Chairman Thomas Capps. The pre-filing approach includes the appointment of ENTRIX, Inc. as a third-party contractor to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement under the direct supervision and control of the FERC staff.

The Greenbrier Pipeline will start in Kanawha County, WV, at connections with Dominion Transmission and Tennessee Gas Pipeline and extend through southwestern Virginia and north central North Carolina to meet the growing natural gas demand of local distribution companies and new power generation.

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