U.S. House May Consider Legislation To Limit Pipeline Lawsuits

Shortly before leaving for the August recess, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) introduced a bipartisan bill to reform the judicial process for challenging federal government permits for energy infrastructure, including pipelines and power transmission, as well as other infrastructure projects subject to environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

H.R. 4776, the Speed Act, would:

• Establish a higher bar for judicial Intervention. Courts could only overturn a permit under NEPA if they find that the reviewing federal agency clearly abused its discretion in following NEPA’s procedural requirements and that the result would have been different absent that abuse.
• Limit a court’s role in evaluating environmental impacts. Federal could not substitute their judgment for a federal agency’s decisions regarding the environmental impacts of a project.
• Constrain remand authority. If a court flags a federal agency’s procedural error and sends the permit back to that agency for a remedy, it must issue specific instructions for the correction and set a reasonable deadline, not to exceed 180 days, for the agency to remedy the error. The challenged permit would remain in force while corrections are made, allowing the project to continue.
• Shorten the litigation window. Legal challenges to permits must be filed within 150 days after the permit is issued.
• Limit who may file a challenge to a permit. Only parties that submitted a substantive, unique comment during the public comment period could file a legal challenge to a permit.
• Narrow the scope of environmental impacts. A reviewing federal agency must only evaluate impacts directly and proximately caused by the project, prohibiting consideration of speculative, distant, or cumulative impacts.

The Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA), which MSCI is a member of, is committed to building support for the legislation once Congress is back in September. Stay tuned to Connecting the Dots for opportunities to make your voice heard as this bill moves through the legislative process.

In the meantime, register to join MSCI on Dec. 3 for a free webinar with EEIA President and CEO Toby Mack in which we will discuss the outlook for energy infrastructure investment. Learn more and register at this link.