Dustin Mulvaney
Like a zombie returned from the dead, permitting reform is back on the Congressional agenda. The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, a bill recast out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and championed by Senators Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-ID), could be headed to the Senate floor for a vote soon. It contains provisions for everything from undoing the pause on building new liquified natural gas facilities, to letting mining companies dump waste on public lands, to promises to expedite the siting process for electricity transmission lines and fossil fuel infrastructure. In typical bipartisan fashion for energy legislation, western public lands are for sale to energy and mining industries. Oil and gas producers will get access to more onshore and offshore energy, force the approval of new liquified natural gas facilities along the Gulf of Mexico to export, and reverse an important court decision and allow mining companies to treat public lands like a hazardous waste dump.
More than 360 environmental organizations sent a letter to the committee chair asking the vote be denied passage, calling it “the latest Dirty Permitting Deal.” The letter cites the impacts from new fossil fuel infrastructure that will be enabled by the legislation, which one estimate found would lock-in carbon burning infrastructures that would emit greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants over their lives.
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