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May 30, 2017

TAKE ACTION: Call Senators To Urge Quick Confirmation Of Key Energy Nominees

Last Tuesday, the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA) sent a letter to U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) calling for swift consideration of President Donald Trump’s nominees to fill two vacancies on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). (The president nominated Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson for these spots on May 8 and the committee heard testimony from the two nominees last week.) 

The EEIA letter noted that, “since early February, the absence of quorum at FERC has put in jeopardy many major energy-delivery infrastructure projects needed to lower energy costs to consumers and to supply clean-burning natural gas to electric generating plants.” The letter also argued, “At stake in these delays are not only lower-cost supplies of natural gas to consumers and industrial customers, but also the necessary transmission capacity to supply the transition to clean-burning natural gas power generation, as well as the capacity necessary for integration of wind and solar power into the grid.” 

The Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) is a member of EEIA and encourages its own members to call the senators who sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to insist that the committee quickly approve the Chatterjee and Powelson nominations. The committee could vote on these nominations in early June, so please act quickly. A list of committee members is available here. Contact information for those senators, and all U.S. senators, is hereDon't hesitate to forward the EEIA letter, or quote from it in your conversations. If you cannot reach the senator directly, please communicate your message to a staff member and ask that they relay the message to the senator. 

Interested in learning more about these nominations? Read this story from the May 15 edition of Connecting the Dots to learn more about why they are so important to the U.S. economy and the industrial metals supply chain. 

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