Stakeholders seek rehearing in Puerto Rico LNG row

New Fortress Energy (NFE) and a group of NGOs have submitted requests to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) related to NFE’s LNG facility in Puerto Rico.

Last month, the FERC determined that the facility is subject to the commission’s jurisdiction under the Natural Gas Act (NGA).

“The commission lacks NGA jurisdiction over the facility and erred by concluding otherwise,” according to NFE which labeled the decision as “arbitrary and capricious.”

The sticking point is the interpretation of whether the 75ft, 10-inch connection of the LNG facility to the San Juan power plant constitutes piping, as claimed by New York-based NFE, or a pipeline as determined by FERC.

“Before the order, developers (such as New Fortress) and stakeholders (such as PREPA and Puerto Rico) could assess the commission’s precedent and industry standards to determine whether a project was excluded from the commission’s jurisdiction because it was not connected to ‘a pipeline’ or lacked other key distinguishing features of jurisdictional LNG terminals,” NFE said in its filing.

For their part, the NGOs, which along with others point to the alleged environmental impact of the LNG facility, blasted FERC’s decision to allow the LNG facility to continue operating in the interim.

In their filing, the NGOs are critical of FERC’s waiver of the mandatory pre-filing requirements as the LNG facility was already built and argue that shutting it down would not interrupt operations of the dual-fuel power plant.