Sabine Pass Liquefaction LLC has asked FERC to deny the Sierra Club’s request for late intervention in the proceeding in which its seeks a certificate to add liquefaction and export facilities on the site of its already operating regasification plant and import terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“Sierra Club’s late intervention will unjustifiably disrupt the proceeding and prejudice the parties,” Sabine Pass said in comments filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Friday [CP11-72].

Sierra Club filed its protest of the Sabine Pass project in late January, arguing that the agency should have done a full environmental impact statement on the project rather than an environmental assessment (EA) (see Daily GPI, Feb. 1). Sierra Club’s intervention “was filed almost 11 months beyond the intervention deadline of March 4, 2011, and approximately 15 months after Sierra Club’s public acknowledgment of the project.”

As explained in an earlier report, “we do not think the Sierra Club’s argument that the Commission should have executed a full environmental impact statement versus an EA poses a significant obstacle to the Commission’s ultimate approval of the project. We have not changed this position,” said energy analyst Christine Tezak of Robert W. Baird & Co.

The Commission will have to respond to the Sierra Club request, either before, or as part of its ruling in the overall Sabine Pass case. FERC could vote notationally on the certificate at any time.

Cheniere Energy, parent of Sabine Pass Liquefaction, had asked FERC to issue a siting order for the facilities at its meeting earlier this month, but the request went unheeded. The Commission will issue a decision “as soon as the order’s ready,” said Jeff Wright, director off FERC’s Office of Energy Projects, last Tuesday (see Daily GPI, March 21). “There’s no deadline for FERC to issue…a siting [decision]…There’s statutory [deadline requirements] that deal with rate cases…but nothing that deals with siting.”

Sabine Pass “hopes to receive a final certificate from the FERC approving its natural gas export facility before the price guarantees on its EPC [lump sum turnkey engineering, procurement and construction agreement with Bechtel Oil, Gas and Chemical] expire on March 31,” Tezak said.

Washington, DC-based lawyer and lobbyist David Wochner, a partner with Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP, who has followed the case, said he was “very confused” as to why Cheniere would have set a start date of March 31 given how long it can take for things to happen at FERC. He noted there is considerable, well-funded opposition to LNG exports, particularly from industrials and chemical companies which would like to keep the cheap gas at home, giving them a competitive advantage in the world market (see Daily GPI, March 27).

The Sabine Pass liquefaction project would be capable of processing an average of 2.2 Bcf/d of pipeline-quality natural gas from the Creole Trail Pipeline, which interconnects with the Sabine Pass terminal.

Sabine Pass Liquefaction has already received Energy Department approval to export 2.2 Bcf/d to countries that have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States and also to non-FTA countries (see Daily GPI, Nov. 22, 2011).

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