Speaking Energy

On November 7, 2025, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) reversed their prior positions and approved Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 401 Water Quality Certifications and other environmental permits for the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company’s (Transco) Northeast Supply Enhancement Project (NESE). NESE is a 25-mile natural gas pipeline expansion project certificated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that is intended to deliver 400,000 dekatherms per day of natural gas produced in Pennsylvania to local distribution company customers in New York City through new facilities in Middlesex County, New Jersey and an underwater segment traversing the Raritan and Lower New York Bays.

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin’s recently presented webinar, “Drilling Down: What Oil & Gas Companies Can Expect from Federal Agencies During Trump’s Second Administration.”

On November 27, 2024, in Venture Global, CP2 LNG, LLC,¹ the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC or Commission) explicitly overruled precedent set in Northern Natural Gas Co.,² a 2021 decision in which FERC made an affirmative finding that an interstate natural gas pipeline project it was certificating under section 7 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA) would not make a “significant” contribution to global climate change. Northern Natural is the only FERC decision in which a so-called significance determination was made with respect to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) arising from a FERC-regulated natural gas infrastructure project. In Venture Global, FERC rejected arguments that it needed to follow Northern Natural and assess the significance of GHG emissions in all NGA certificate proceedings to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires federal agencies, including FERC, that perform “major federal actions,” which include issuing NGA section 7 certificates, to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) if the action will “significantly affect[] the quality of the human environment.”³ FERC has been under pressure to fully explain why it has chosen not to apply Northern Natural’s significance analysis in subsequent cases, and that issue is currently before FERC on remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) in Healthy Gulf et al. v. FERC, which reviewed FERC’s approval of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal under NGA section 3.

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin’s recently presented “FERC Order No. 2023-A: What’s New and What’s Next?” webinar, along with the program materials.

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin’s recently presented “FERC’s Interconnection Rule: What’s In, What’s Out and Does It Matter?” webinar, along with the presentation materials.