Input Stories

What’s going on: In a unanimous vote last Thursday, FERC commissioners “introduced a notice of proposed rulemaking for the [blanket certificate] program that would roughly double its cost caps for types of blanket certificate projects.”

• The program, introduced in 1982, offers “an administratively efficient means to enable a company to construct, modify, acquire, operate and abandon a limited set of natural gas facilities,” according to the FERC website.
• The program’s last substantive changes were made in 2006.

What it means: The cap raising will align limits with “long-standing expectations for the scale of projects that are appropriate for the blanket program” and “further streamline our permitting processes and speed up construction that Americans depend upon for affordable and reliable energy,” FERC Chair Laura Swett said.

• The changes “would also expand the categories of projects eligible for streamlined authorization and extend the blanket certificate framework toward LNG facilities for the first time” (National Law Review).

Deadline extension: Also last week, FERC extended by a year the deadline for projects using temporary regulatory waivers on cost limits, pushing it back to May 2028.

Follow up: This month’s revisions introduction comes less than a year after FERC issued a notice seeking public comment on whether it should permanently change the cost thresholds for projects authorized under the blanket certificate program.